Day 1 Climbing: Charmarande
We decided to head to Charmarande as Jonathan did a little bit of research prior to our Eurotrip. We were mostly targeting areas that would be accessible without car. In the little paper Jonathan brought, the author stated that if you had only one day to climb at Font, make it Charmarande. It's supposed to be "closer than close" to the station and only a 10 minute walk to the boulders. On top of that, there's problems ranging up to 7c.
10 minute walk, my butt! The instructions definitely left out a few details like... walk next to the train track and turn right at the park sign until you find a parking lot.
Long story short, Jonathan and I spent 2.5 hours looking for the boulders. We even had French hikers point out the direction of the boulders... but did we ever find them? No. We did however find the kid circuits that come before the rest of the boulders. It wasn't until we got home that we realized that the reason we never found challenging problems was because we never got to the main area.
If you have one day to spend at Font either go with a map after extensive research of the area or you may find that you spent your only day searching for the place.
Seeing this number was like seeing the holy grail... or a holy grail replica since we never actually got there...
Playing around on kid circuits
Day 2 Climbing: Rocher Canon
We decided to go to Rocher Canon. Our guidebook listed a few cool looking climbs here. And the author in Jonathan's papers said it was a doable 30 minute walk. This time we were a little smarter and looked up all the directions on the internet prior to going. Jonathan even drew out a clever little road map for us.
Yet, we still managed to screw things up and start off in the wrong direction after getting off the train. Once we got on track however, things seem to fall in place. The only scary part of the walk was on Rue Ronde... pretty much like walking on a 55mph road. Very scary.
Time to take to get to Rocher Canon? Over an hour. But based on our last Font trip, we at least only doubled the author's estimated time... that's a pretty remarkable improvement.
It was difficult to locate where we were on the topo once we got in. We mostly climbed the blue circuit until I ran into Phillipe, a non-English speaking local. We spent the day mostly communicating with the use of a handy dandy pocket English-French dictionary (thank you Merriam Webster!). We did get to climb a pretty classic 5+ arete (Font grade) and at the end of the day, we found Levitation.
Problem? We had no beta for it so it looked like a whole wall of many, many chalked holds. We kind of fooled around on the roof traverse portion and then called it a day.
Attempting to figure out the roof portion of Levitation.
Rest Day: Centre Georges Pompidou
I'll say this... a climb can feel eons easier when you have beta. Try to recall the last time you had no beta to a tricky problem and couldn't do a thing. Following which, when someone told you the beta it was like an "ohhh-ah-ha" moment. That was basically Levitation for us. Internet was expensive in our hostel, so we went to the Centre Pompidou to get our youtube/Vimeo fix. It wasn't like they had internet there exactly for us to use... they just made it possible for us to weasel around their "Welcome to India" home to find internet. This is the means in which we found beta for Levitation.
The computer cluster we spent our rest days in looking up beta
Beta research!
Day 3 Climbing: Rocher Canon
On our third day climbing, we met two climbing brothers on the SNCF train out to Bois le Rois. When they discovered that we were headed to Rocher Canon, they told us that we could follow them there on a different path than we previously took as they walk through Rocher Canon to climb at Bas Cuvier.
They showed us a map which indicated official trails and pointed out markers indicated the trails when we walked through neighborhoods. Total travel time was under 40 minutes walking a relaxing pace.
Our first stop was Levitation area. We warmed up on some easy slab and what was supposed to be a 6c+ (but felt a bit soft). I tried the beta we researched the day before but quickly found out that I needed to adapt with new beta as many of the moves were still a little reachy for me. Also, most of the videos we watched had people start from the left block, so we didn't really have beta on how to transition from the roof to the left block. We spent about an hour or so sussing out beta before we were joined by a group of 5 French men about our ages.
Jonathan about to cross into the right block!
After working the problem together, we saw one of the French men figure out his string of beta. I try not to be crazy competitive, but sometimes it's just my nature. Watching him figure out his beta somehow jumpstarted my engine. I wanted to send it before him. Immature? Maybe. However, it was what I needed to get the send. After working Levitation all morning, I was psyched to get my first Font 7a+!
We later met and joined a Norwegian and German climber. The rest of the day didn't go well for me as I was unable to complete a 6a, another 7a, and a 6c test piece.
Day 4 Climbing: Rocher Canon
Our last day at Font didn't go well for both Jonathan and me. We both found problems to project, however both of us continued to fall at the last move.
Jonathan on Magifix assis, 7a
For me, I found a 7b (Rue de Siam) that was completely my style... traversing crimps. However, I was unable to figure out the last move because of the lack of feet. 3 attempts to make it to the undercling. 2 hours struggling to figure out how to do the move before the topout. Never figured it out. I supposed that's why it's 7b.
We did however get to work on Les Calins de Kim. This one was more difficult for me because I totally couldn't reach the holds on the right side. Jonathan was already pretty much at full extension. However, I came up with a string of cool compression moves instead. I never got the climb, but the moves felt so awesome, it was completely OK.
Last, but not least, we visited Chasseur des Prises. I pretty much was unable to start the climb. However, Jonathan put together a few good attempts before calling it a day. He does a pretty wicked toe hook in order to move into the crimp. I think he did pretty awesome given how it was 6pm and tired at the end of the day. To be honest, at that point we were both pretty pooped and sad that we didn't have more days... or that we didn't train at HP40 slopers for this. Haha. Next time. :)
Jonathan on Chasseur des Prises
All in all, we both agreed it was a really good trip and we had a blast, despite myself only sending pretty much only one problem the entire trip!
Since the Eurotrip is over, I suppose it's time for rope season finally. Now to find myself a rope climbing partner since J will be in Texas all summer!
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