Fontainebleau Gallery Posted

New photo journal posted.

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Last Day in Fontainebleau

Yesterday was our last day in Fontainebleau. We had the crash pad until 2pm and the rental car til 4, so we made the most of our morning with a few hours of climbing (see Ryan's post) followed by a visit to the chateau. After climbing, we were starving, so we decided to make our last meal in France really count... we got Chinese. I would say it was adequate but we did get a complimentary shot of sake before leaving :D That was not actually our last meal in France - we will be staying one more night in Paris before returning home, so we will worry about getting in a good last meal then!

We got to the chateau too late to actually see the inside, but we were more interested in touring the gardens anyway - it's a very pretty area, with multiple man-made lakes and pools (thank you, Napoleon) that kept the grounds nice and cool. Nice little spot for a picnic on a hot day.

We discovered last night that today was Europe's Daylight Saving switcheroo, so we ended up losing an hour of sleep, which was a bummer because we already had to be up and ready to go at 5am for our taxi to the Orly airport, from which we would be flying to Pisa to Florence. But we managed to get up and catch our flight in a timely manner - and now here we are in Florence!

Some last impressions of Fontainebleau before sharing my first impressions of Tuscany. Fontainebleau is a warm and friendly town, and it is cleaner and just as scenic in a woodsy way than Paris. There is some very good food with a wide variety of options, AND they have a store called Monoprix, which is like a French Target! I feel like there is something else special about Fontainebleau...Oh yeah! Did I mention that the climbing here is amazing? There is something for everyone, and even a coward like me can find fun stuff to get to the top of! The fact that we had beautiful weather the entire time we were here, when we were expecting rain, made it that much harder to leave, but then I got to Florence...With that cliff hanger, I bid you good night!

 

 

Font Photo Journal

I finally got around to posting a photo journal of most of the Fontainebleau climbing shots. I have more but they're stuck on the iPhone for now.

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Font and Food

I realize we have been neglecting the foodies out there with our recent climbing only posts, so here's a brief post to fill you all in on what you've been missing out on. :p

Since we have spent all day climbing pretty hard for the past 4 days, we've been brown bagging our breakfasts and lunches. For dinner, we've been pretty tired, so one night we ate at the little Indian restaurant (for the second time!), then another night we did the Belgian brasserie (for the second time!). However, these meals were definitely not throw always! I'm actually really amazed at how good the Indian restaurant is - we got an appetizer that we had never had at any other Indian restaurant we had been to before. They were essentially ground chicken beignets with some super tasty Indian seasoning. Then I had chicken korma and Ryan had the chicken tikka masala. The flavor was really good, but one thing I have noticed about getting "ethnic" food in other Western countries - they are afraid of spice. It's a shame, but I get it. Not everyone grew up with spicy Mexican food as a staple in their diet. I'm just impressed that France allows other countries to share their food with the French public!

Font Day 4: Éléphant Area

We were told that the area called Elephant was an area not to miss, so on our fourth day we decided to pay a visit. Being sore from the previous day, I keep swearing to Rachel that I won't be climbing much today, and especially not anything hard. She never believes this...

Once again, as soon as we get to the climbing area I'm a kid in a candy store. We warm up on a couple Blue climbs (like 4a-5a-ish) and the then I turn a corner and see sangri-la! Crazy-rad 45-degree overhang walls all over the place. I can barely restrain myself long enough to drag the pad over to the sit starts.

Font Day 3: Franchard Isatis

After the high volume of low grade climbing from the day before I was ready to try my hands at some of the harder stuff. The night before I put together a list of 6a through 6c climbs I'd like to try at Franchard Isatis, which by the way I only got on a single one. Instead I mostly just let my ADD take me where ever I saw a fun looking route, and at this place that's all over! I'm like a cat with a laser pointer in these forests. I jump from climb to climb as soon as a new one enters my peripheral.

After warming up on the first several blue circuit climbs I saw a Bleausard (a local Font climber) waltz up an amazing looking prow with perfect technique. When he got off he started explaining his beta (in French) to another climber nearby. I picked up enough to give it a try. The climb is called Le Statique 6b. It follows a severely overhanging line with a throw to a jug hold, however the crux is pressing off the jug to find a hidden sloper to mantle up on. It took me a couple tries to figure out where the hidden hold was, but on my third I managed to pull over the top.

Font Day 2: Roche Fin Climbing

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!

 

 

Font Day 1: Bas Cuvier Bouldering

For our first day climbing in Fontainebleau I wanted to go to the area with a reputation for being the hardest- Cuvier. I figured that getting my ass kicked the first day out will make every other day feel easier by comparison. Also, I couldn't track down a pad so I wanted to go somewhere I thought might be busy enough to bum pads off people, but that didn't really happen. The one time I was offered a pad by someone it was a really nice Scottish guy, but I thought he was offering me "maps" and not "mats". Oh well...

We started out on some really challenging slabs. The first one I tried I got pretty easily but the next three problems shut me down. I had no idea what climbs or grades I was on- I was just out for fun and exploration. Bas Cuvier is a very popular and old area where most of the foot holds have been polished glass-smooth. The natural rock color is grey, so since the polished rock turns a light color, my approach has been to avoid those areas for feet. This works pretty good some times but definitely not on all problems.

After this introduction to the area, I started looking for some harder stuff. I learned later (via Bleau.info) what I was actually climbing. I tried a cool little sit start roof problem that took me a few tries to get but I couldn't figure out its name. Then at the recommendation of a Scottish couple we were talking to I jumped on a couple blue circuit problems both rated 4a or so. After trying and failing at a few 7a's, I jumped on Fissure Morin 4a which was a very fun problem. Between Fissure Morin and the Helicopter boulder there was a cool little 6a problem with a steep sit start on pockets and a slopey mantle on rock features the Scottish guy was calling "Dragon Back". After a few attempts (and scoping out the holds from above) I managed to get up it.

These were all fairly challenging for the grade but not unlike what I've grown accustom to in the US, grade-wise. The Font grading system covers more grades below V0 than just VB, so everything below about 4a is suppose to be in the VB range. 4a - 4c is suppose the be V0. 5abc is V1-3. 6abc is V4-6, and 7a meets up with our V7. I've found that the lower grades can be really challenging, and many that should be VBs or V0s (3a - 4a) often feel like V2 or V3. This seems to be a common observation with the area. 7a definitely seems to be the grade that I really have to work hard on, and success would take multiple sessions, which was my expectation.

Here are a few othe problems I tried and failed at: Cortomaltese 7a (I came really close!), L'Hélicoptere 7a, Holey Moley 7a, Le Carnage 7b+, and Charcuterie 7a. Other than Cortomaltese, I wasn't even close on the others.

[Note: Bad WiFi means pictures will have come later. Included links show soe of the climbs though.]