February 16, 2020 - Dream boulder.

More than a year ago, in November 2018, Pieter and I had tried the beautiful but scary "Onde Sensuelle" in Apremont Mare aux Biches, for the first and only time. I had already seen the boulder long before, but it is so exposed that no hair on my head ever thought of trying it alone.
After the session we had in 2018, I knew that it was possible alone, with at least two crashpads and from time to time, I felt the urge to go back, but never did. After all, I did kind of promise to Pieter that I wouldn't go back without him.
Pieter and his wife have taken a year off work and will be leaving for a very long trip in about a month, so I was glad when he yesterday proposed to go to "Onde Sensuelle" today. After having waited for so long, it did make me nervous though.
To be able to climb more comfortable, we decided to take four crashpads, and like mules we each carried two and hiked towards my dream boulder.

Walking towards "Onde Sensuelle", of the top can be seen on the right, above the middle of the picture.

Knowing that that every separate move is not extremely hard, but that lacking resistance to execute everything from the start made us fail last time, I was prepared and even ate some breakfast. (For those who don't me very well, I usually only eat in the evening.)

I didn't want to lose too much energy, so only worked out the crux moves before starting to make attempts from the start. Quite some attempts later, every time falling on the before last move, I adapted my foot placement and finally stuck the final jug. Unfortunately, I dabbed the crashpad when taking the swing, so I wanted to do it again, but clean. 

I took a long break and a few attempts later, grabbed the jug again, made the small swing, didn't touch anything and screamed out all the relief when I stood on top of the boulder again. They might have even heard me up to Barbizon.

Stupidly enough, even though I had re-positioned the camera after my break, I forgot to press record. Strangely though, it didn't bother me too much, as Pieter was there as my witness and my consciousness is clean. Anyway, the boulder police will have their say again.

Fontainebleau - Apremont Mare aux Biches - Onde Sensuelle 7B+

Pieter still continued for a while, but after two hours and a half, he was out of power.

As we had four crashpads with us now, we took the occasion to try one of higher boulders just above "Onde Sensuelle", on the top of the hill and chose the very nice looking "Véridique".
We seriously underestimated the difficulty, but after another hard fight and using Pieter's method, I managed to top this one out as a nice bonus.
Even though Pieter found the method and still tried hard, he was totally out of energy and got shut down after a while.

Fontainebleau - Apremont Mare aux Biches - Véridique 7B

It was a beautiful warm day with temperatures up to 18°C and an almost warm hard gushing wind and the view from the top of the hill was just magnificent.
Carrying the crashpads back to the cars felt much harder than this morning though. The body was tired, but I was satisfied.

Walking back down the valley of Mare aux Biches.