2 weeks in Fontainebleau: Day 1-3

I haven't been to Font since October and it was definitely time to go back to complete some unfinished projects and send some new stuff!

Day 1:

After doing the final round of The Depot winter boulder league last night then driving straight down to Font over night was pretty epic to say the least. It was raining when we arrived at our gite so we decided to do a food shop and stock up for the week. After that the weather cleared up and it became really sunny so we headed to Roche Sabots (a place we are very familiar with) to have a relaxed climb on some easier problems as we we're shattered. After climbing a few 7a's and 7a+'s I ended up repeating an 8a I had done in October last time I was there (Sale Gosse assis). Joe Swales had previously done the stand start to this problem which gets 7c so he attempted the sit. He cruised the flick off the mono at the start but just couldn't link the whole problem together. I am certain he will get his first 8a this trip.

                                              Joe Swales on Salle Gosse Assis

Day 3:

Yesterday we went to Bas Cuvier. Me and John climbed Aerosol 7b+ and then had a few tries at La Balance 7c before getting rained off it. 

                                                    John Thornton on Aerosol

Today was an awesome day! We met up with my friend Mike who was on his last day in Font. He showed us this really cool boulder in the middle of nowhere with an 8a problem on it called Opium. It was a bit morpho but I managed to send it after figuring out the beta that worked for me. I really enjoyed that climb and would recommend anyone who climbs at that level to go and try it.

http://vimeo.com/90013936

Video of me climbing Opium.

After that we wandered off to try and find a problem called Hueco Tanks 7c+. But instead stumbled across a huge outcrop of untouched boulders. I put up a new line fittingly called "Where's Hueco?" which goes at about 7b. I will definitely have to make a longer trip to font at some point to have a look at some of the other cool looking lines there.

After all of that we had some lunch and ate some weird pink stuff which sent us a bit hyper, we took the trek to find the elusive Le Kraken 7c. Leviathan 7a to the left was our warm up which I managed to flash and then started working the moves on Le Kraken. We were getting really close to the hardest move (a dyno to a crack) When me and Joe sent it straight after each other! All aboard the send train!!! Toot! toot!

I will keep you informed on the rest of the trip with more mini blogs like this one throughout.