Fontainebleau Diary 2018 - Part 2

Day 3 of the climbing holiday, and we decided to go to Rocher du Potala - Liz, Ceri and I went here last year and really enjoyed it, I got a few blues on that trip and was keen to try and get some harder stuff this year.  I also decided to try out my new action camera, a WaspCAM ROX 9942 which I managed to pick up cheap earlier in the year (half the price of that Amazon listing) to video a few climbs.  I started out warming up on some Yellows and Oranges with Liz, Ceri, Sheila and Lolly which gave me a great opportunity to test the camera.


After one yellow and two oranges it was time to get moving on the blue circuit and get a bit of good climbing under my belt. Unfortunately although the circuit had been updated in 2017 the topos on bleau.info are not using the new numbering, and only Andy's 2018 edition of Fun Bloc had this circuit in so mapping problems got a bit tricky and there are still two I haven't managed to marry up.  After cribbing some beta off Andy and Kelly who had already done a few of these while I was warming up I got a number of problems under my belt, and after trying a traverse a few times with Andy and Kelly I decided I needed to go and climb something to keep my head in the game.

I wandered a short distance away and found a nice little bit of rock in Astérix and decided to set my camera up and give it a go. It was an interesting problem with a combination of slopey holds to palm down on and crimpy holds on a balancey concave slab. If felt very much like some of the shoulder heavy inside corner problems sometimes set at The Climbing Works which are great fun when you crack them.  The practice must have paid off as I flashed it on sight, though I wasn't sure I was going to as at the point where Andy and Kelly wandered over I was precariously balanced and quite contorted - one of those moments where you have to be careful how you breath lest you topple over backwards off the rock!  Once I'd got the foot up it was all over and I topped out before supporting Andy while he worked out how to approach it - a theme of the holiday was how differently all of us climb and where our strengths and weaknesses are.  With a niggly should this wasn't an ideal problem for Andy, but he got it done.


We carried on climbing long into the evening here as I think we were all in the zone and feeling quite psyched - Liz had an orange traverse she was projecting, Kelly was working on Acid, and other people had their own favourite bit of rock to tickle.  Andy and I found a nice big lump of rock with interesting problems on, though sadly quite a few of these don't match up with the bleau.info topo so I don't know much about them. A particular highlight for me here was La Farissure - a 5+ wall climb with some nice cracks on it which again needed shoulders:


The as yet un-named Blue 16 was not quite so straightfoward. The start was fine, but I seemingly struggled to work out how to get over the rounded top so resorted to stroking and fondling the rock until I found a way to handle it


We joined Liz looking at her Orange traverse for a bit, had a look around some other bits, before finding another fun problem - also a traverse - to play on.  This was a really nice way to end the day.


If anyone can tell me the name of this problem I would love to know, as Liz was doing really well on it - completing all the technical moves and just lacking the strength left in her arms to mantle the top out - and wants to put it on her "to do" list.

Three days of climbing done. A "rest" day to follow.  I'll let those quote marks pique your interest as to just how restful it was...

Fontainebleau Diary 2017 - Day 3

For our third day in Fontainebleau we split in to two groups; Ed, Kelly, Andy and Kelly went to Bas Cuvier to session the classic problems La Marie-Rose and Duroxmanie while I went to Rocher du Potala with Liz and Ceri.  Our aim was to get lots of the Yellow and Orange circuits plus anything else which took my fancy.

The first problems on the orange and yellow circuits were on a fairly tall slab, but the climbing was good and I got up both of them.  We meandered around the circuit trying various things along the way, in total I got 7 oranges and 9 yellows.

Depart Yellow and Orange

There were a couple of tasty blue problems which I attempted as well, Scorpion was a lovely traverse under a roof and then over the roof from a ledge, I was really pleased to flash it on sight and it felt really good.

Scorpion 

Having noted what I climbed from the book I got thoroughly confused looking at Bleau.info as nothing matched up, I think the others I managed to climb were La Parfumerie and La Douce.

It was a good day at a gentle pace, and once again the rain threatened us but then went away before it could do any damage.  Tomorrow is a rest day, and we will see what the rest of the week brings.