what to do round4 - escape to FONT

because of this horrible weatherforecast some two weeks ago, greg an i packed spontaneously our stuff together and escaped to font, cause forecast was great there with 15C and WIND ;) 

after driving 6hours through rain it finally cleared and we coud se the stars - just right before we arrived in font. after a night spent in the infamous F1 in nemours we wook up to sunny and WIDNY weather - big smile on our faces as we entred the classic area of bas cuvier cause the friction for so late in the year was just great. unfortounatly we had no camera with us, so to make som illustrations the pics that are used here all all from the net, you will find the source right under the pics.

we played arround on the boulders got our obligate nemesis on a 5something-wurm-up and so on :) then we watched a guy, not 20anymore, obioussly a real bleausard, cause he was just flowing effortlessly through all the boulders. then we "met" at Cortomaltèse.

cortomaltèse, pic from bleau.info, by michele caminati

there the bleausard tried to climb the crack in the middle of the pic above but just with left hand and then to exit straight. it looked quite hard to stand up on the "podest" and he droped down on the last moves several times. we offred him our pads cause there was a big stone in the landing. he acepted and invited us kindly to try too. i was a bit sceptical, cause he did all the other problems in the area so easy and had to struggle here - hmmmmm - but never mind, it looked cool and so we tried all together. the blausard introuced himself as philippe and as i found out at home it was Philippe Le Denmat, the opener of countless problems in the forrests of bleau and also the opener of the famous slab of  duel! aha, therefore all the boulders in cuvier looked so easy while he was gliding through them.

philippe on le duel, 8a - no pads for real men!   pic by blau.info

as he told us the problem we tried was not climbed yet, and after some changes in beta greg finally toped out first (followed by philippe and myself) and made his first first ascent in bleau. philippe sougested as a name:  tourniqueton  cause you make such a nice 180-turn when blowing the crux :) grade woud be somewhere arround font 6c, but i needed way less tries on the berezinga-carnage assis which is suggested as a font 8a - grading is just funny childish rubbish some times (well most of the time)

afterwards philippe showed us the first 7a boulder of font, the famous: l'abottoir. he showed us the originaly climbed sequence (later way easier beta was found)  with a very hard undercrossmove in the middle. powerfull and tecnical at the same time. today this beta woud be a hard 7b for sure (if you compare it to other 7a's in the area). sick what people allready climbed in 1960!!! it was verynice to have philippe with us, cause like that you get so much more insight in the history of an area. and in an area like font there is so much history sitting litteraly arround every other corner.

then i made use of the great windy conditiones and feeded with beta from greg i climbed fast through the very nice and superclassics right from l'abottoir. le carnage was first, la bérézina next and then bérézina-carnage combi assis. it was very nice for once to just climb some problems and not to try for weeks to get some single moves solved ;)

then we were allready bit tired, but wanted to visit the boulder of the famous gecko.

michele caminati IS a gecko, pic by bleau.info

first time i touched the hold michele is aiming in the pic above with left hand i was shocked. it was so bad, it did not feel even close to a hold. my skin was so soft, i was just gliding over it. so we tried arround a bit on the right variation called les beaux quartiers. went bit better on that one but we both were allready too destroyed to send. after a well deserved restday (i am not 20anymore) and with better skin we were back at the gecko again. i wanted to know if i really just coud not hang on this hold or not. this time it all went way better. i did all the moves but the move into the undercling. i could just not feel it. i was very comfortable sitting on my hook but i just coud not hold this strange undercling when grabbing for it. its crazy what friction and good skin can do in font. and i can imagine on this "noholdbouldering" where some holds are not a little bit positive (and where you cant yourself really pull in) you can get frustrated because you can just slip out of this holds whenever you dont think about it. (visit uncle somebodys blog for a hint what the nohold- gecko can do to you). therefore i prefere it to try hard problems at my limit on more "positiv" holds (like the problems in the ticino, avers normally have), where you can dig deep and give all you have. but nevertheless i will be back in the winter. i want to feel what real friction feels like :)