Fontainebleau Diary 2017 - Day 5

After the torrential rain of our rest day we woke up to a chilly morning with very wet ground, but a mostly blue sky with warming sunshine. This meant we put in to play our plan to see if there was parking at Gorge aux Chats with a backup of 91.1 if it was busy.  As it happened there were only 2 other cars in the small layby at the side of the road (And they too were British).  We made the very short walk in and started to warm up on the new yellow circuit which isn't listed on Bleau.info yet as they have not graded them.  After a while I started to add in blue problems as this year I have been trying not to go for volume on the easy problems but instead climb withing my grade on blues and try to push myself on to reds.  The first to go was Rohald Dalle which was a classic crimpy slab Font problem; as I was figuring it out the first of what transpired to be several rain showers came in giving me time to examine the feet while it dried, and I was stoked to get it sent.

After this Andy and I decided to try Dallain from the red circuit (font 6a), we were both getting up to the good right and side pull, and bailing out.  We both decided it was a dyno to the top as although I could see a static route it wasn't going to go for me.  Andy managed to catch the top and found an awesome ledge but came down, so we popped around the corner and went up the blue to check the top out.  This gave Andy the confidence to try it again and he got it done, I climbed back up to where I had got to before but utterly bottled it, I rarely have the balls for a dyno when I'm inside so this would really have needed me to commit to it.

After this the rain came back briefly so we sheltered under some roofs while eating lunch and commenting on how similar to The Roaches this weather was (in joke reference to an ill fated trip across the Peak District last year which means I am no longer allowed to proffer an opinion on the weather forecast when we are trying to go climbing.)

After lunch all my motivation had evaporated so I tried to get my head back in to it on some yellows, before getting La Bascule done - the very problem you can see us sheltering under above. It was then back to lovely quartzy crimpy slabs with La Minou and L'Arbre à Pain which I was really pleased to get.

We then headed up to some classic steep roofy problems which Ed, Kelly and Andy were trying, Liz, Kelly and I wandered down to try some easier things and were just getting started on La Boule and the neighbouring Petanque before another and unfortunately heavier rain came in which knocked us out for longer, eventually the sun came out again and we tried Pomme and Le Terrorist but the top was too damp and I lacked balls (again) to finish it.  Instead I got another crimpy slab in La Dalle Bleue and then we finished up with La Traversée des Fougères before returning to base for beer and chilli. Tomorrows forecast has appeared to clear up, so we may yet get to 91.1 - watch this space.