Font Trip Part Deux

Back in Geneva now. At the laundromat washing my stinky climbing trip clothes. Will do a quick recap of the rest of our climbing days. Trip video is at the end of the post if you want to skip all the reading bits)

Day 5: 

After our very fun day at Bas Cuvier we decided to focus on a more challenging goal. Near the top of my list of climbs I wanted to try to get done while in Font was "Deux Faux Plis en Plats Reel" a really cool looking 7C on a boulder that looks like a crashed flying saucer. We headed to the Franchard Hautes Plaines area along with Thomo and Cedar to check it out a long with a couple other nice looking climbs.

We started by warming up on some blue circuit problems. (For anyone who doesn't know Font has a colour coded circuit system where they group problems of a certain difficulty by colour and then try to climb them all in a day) The blue circuit is generally under about V3 but with a lot of them requiring tricky font footwork they can still be quite challenging.  

Thomasina Warming up

Jamie Spotting Cedar on her warm up.

We had fun crawling through a tunnel that went straight through a boulder that I at first thought was too small to fit through, but after Cedar, Thomo and Jamie had all gone through I had to ignore any fears of getting stuck and wriggle my way through.

Cedar goes through the hole.

Tighter squeeze for Jamie.

After our warm up we went on to our first objective in the area a highly recommended 7A called "Lapin ou Canard"I had seen several videos of the beta so knew exactly what to do and managed to flash it,  missing the exact sequence Jamie managed it second go and Thomo flashed as well. I have to admit that compared to the other 7As we had tried this trip this one felt substantially easier.

 We moved on to our main goal on the flying saucer boulder. After realizing that the first move was harder than it looks we started to make some good progress. There are two possible sequences for this climb. You bull out to a bad rail with your right hand and either just jump to the lip from there or match the rail and then go to the lip. Jamie was trying the dyno beta and I was trying the match and we were both making good links but unfortunately putting the whole thing together from the start proved too hard for us in one day.

Next we went to check out "La Surplomb de la Coquille Assis" a classic 7A+ in the area. After first goes where we both got quite near the top we were both confident we would send this one quickly. 

Jamie on "La Surplomb de la Coquille"

Then we kept falling on the last move. We did the last move separately and it didn't feel too hard so with renewed confidence we started trying from the start again. Once again we kept falling on the last move. Confident we could do it we kept trying until we weren't even able to to the moves we had been finding easy. Completely exhausted we admitted defeat and went home.

Day 6: After all the effort we put in to not climb those two problems the day before I decided to take a rest day. Jamie considered resting but instead opted to do an Orange Circuit at the Apremont area. Orange circuits are easier than blue but with polished font footholds they can still be quite tricky. And once we found the circuit we quickly realized they can be quite tall as well. We didn't bring a bad because we didn't want to have to drag it around so I was following Jamie from climb to climb with just a square of carpet to wipe his feet on. 

About the level we expected from the Orange Circuit

Getting trickier 

Impressively he made his way through the whole circuit (skipping only a couple that were just too polished and scary with no pad). I felt quite glad I had opted to rest instead of trying them because they looked a lot more challenging than I would have expected from an orange circuit.

Tall and slabby

Trust those feet.

Day 7: After my rest day and Jamie's pseudo rest day we went back to Haute Plaines to try to finish off the 7A+ we had almost finished last time. We did a quick warm up and then showed up expecting to fire it off first go. 

Fun Warm up arete.

Again we kept falling on the last move. We kept trying until my left arm started to hurt from trying to lock off to reach the hold. We'd almost given up when Jamie managed to pull if off and finish the climb after what was much more of a struggle than either of us had anticipated. 

We then moved on to the nearby Isatis area to check out a few climbs. We failed to get off the ground on a 7B+ sit start we wanted to check out but the 6A stand version was still very fun. 

Classic font sloper fun.

Then Jamie found a dyno he liked the look of (Vin Rouge 7A+) and managed to fire to the top in a handful of goes.

Setting up.

So close.

 I then tried a 7B called Rataplat that was all about the top out which was just one giant round classic font turtle-shell sloper. I felt close and nearly had it on one go when my foot slipped out from under me. Again I could feel my arm starting to hurt so I had to walk away. Not a very productive day for me after my rest day but that's the way it goes so I went home and iced my arm.

Day 8: When we woke up in the morning to a light covering of snow we decided we would both take a proper rest day and hope for better conditions the next day.

Day 9: Better conditions were not to be had when we woke up the next morning to a rather heavy blanket of snow with more coming down. As it was our last day to climb we set out with brooms and towels in the hopes we could brush something off to climb. We went to Bas Cuvier again thinking it might have more traffic of like minded people brushing problems. When we got to the main area we saw several people attempting to clean off problems but it seemed futile as the snow kept coming down.

Slightly dejected we decided to have a look for a roof problem (Rencontre Plafonnique 7B) we had tried and failed to find out last day there, thinking even if it wasn't climbable we would at least know where it was and maybe a few of the roof moves would be dry. When we found it everything but the very top was dry and the top seemed like it had good holds we could brush off. We hadn't even brought our stuff because we really didn't expect it to be climbable so we excitedly went back to the car and got our gear. After a quick brush of the top we started working the bottom moves. They seemed quite do-able and pretty soon we were linking it nearly to the top. Actually topping out proved slightly more challenging as it was actually snowing kind of hard at that point but we both managed to get up it and were very happy to have climbed something on our last day. 

Mildly lost in the snow.

It was still early so we then went and played Memory, Clue and Barbies. with Cedar and Thomo at Gite Arbonne. Then it was time for home and early bed as Jamie needed to be dropped at the Fontainebleau train station at 7:00 am the next morning to make it to Paris for his flight.

Day 10: Woke up early to even more snow which made for a terrifying drive to the train station where we passed two cards off the road and our little rental car with no snow tires slid around every time we stopped, but we crawled along and made it there safely. I then had to turn around and do the same thing back to the highway were I inched along in snow for an hour until I made it out of the weather and had a smooth ride back to Geneva.

Here is the trip in badly shot video form:

Dave and Jamie climb rocks in Font. from Dave Stack on Vimeo.