On our second day in Font we managed to rent a pad, so we headed to an Roche Fin in the Trois Pignons area. We were recommended an orange circuit by the Scottish couple we met at Cuvier that they said they really enjoyed because it had a lot of variation in techniques and most of the problems weren't too high off the ground. That sounded just like what we were after.
In Fontainebleau, many of the boulder problems are organized into circuits of varying difficulty. Yellow circuits are easy and have climbs completely in the easier VB grades (2a-3a). Orange circuits are a bit harder but still fall into the VB to maybe v0 range (3a-4a)... in theory. (In reality, many of the problems felt like they were much harder than this!) It keeps going up: blue, red, black, white, etc. The circuits consist of numerous problems that are to be done in a specific order. The routes are marked with little arrows painted onto the rock in the color of the circuit your doing. Often dots will indicate where your foot level should be for a traverse, and other arrows will indicate the top-out direction.
The orange circuit we chose had 40 problems in total, and many of them felt a bit harder than VB. A couple could easily have been V2 or V3 in bishop. This circuit was definitely more technical than powerful, which was nice. It forced a number of interesting moves like mantles and highsteps, and a number of problems got high enough off the ground that good concentration was a necessity.
I managed to complete the whole thing with no falls (*) and spent the rest of our time working on some red circuit routes in the 5b range. I also got on a roof problem called Mémoire d'Outre Tombe 7a+. I got to the crux past the roof, but couldn't pull the move. I also jumped on some really hard sit start overhang, but I couldn't find it on any maps.
* Truth be told, I had to down climb one route that I got off-route on, but I sent it the very next go. So my flash probably doesn't count by local standards!
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