The past week was warm. Really warm! Every single day was around 20-25ºC with no wind and a lot of sun and humidity, which made it impossible to climb really hard. Anyways .. it was a great week. We met many of our old friends and changed our focus from climbing hard to climbing a lot.
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| Morning Hangout at Rocher aux Sabots |
Around the village of Fontainebleau, located about 50km away from Paris, there is a huge area of sandstone bouldering. The huge are is known as one of the biggest and best climbing areas in the world and has a long history back to the 1960’s and beyond. One speciality of Fontainebleau are so called Parcours.
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| Rocher aux Sabots – Red Parcour, Problem Number 9 |
A Parcour contains several boulderproblems which are marked by colored numbers and will lead you through the whole sector. To complete a Parcour you will have to climb every single boulder it contains, which may be a count between 20 and 80.
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| Rocher aux Sabots – Graviton, fb7A |
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| Moritz Eisenlauer in Apremont |
As I realized how warm it really was, I decided to not even try to climb hard. I went for Parcours instead and along the week I finished a couple of them:
- Blue Parcour in Rocher Guichot (20 boulders)
- Red Parcour in Rocher aux Sabots (34 boulders)
- Red Parcour in Franchard Isatis (50 out of 62 boulders)
- Red Parcour in Bas Cuvier (42 boulders)
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| Finjas birthday present |
Finja loved it in Fontainebleau. As a late birthday present by her grandparents (the ones visiting us in Australia) she got a Bobby Car last week, and Fontainebleau has a lot of sandy, flat access paths. Her godfather Moritz and Julia hauled her everywhere, we almost did not use our baby carrier this week. 🙂
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| Finja and her chauffeur Moritz |
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| Finja and her chauffeur Moritz |
Around haveway through the week, more friends arrived and we did hang our a little bit at Peter Würth’s rented Gîte, were we could use the shower and were we cooked on our gazoline stoves in the garden.
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| Peters Gîte in Noisy-sur-Ecole |
On our very last day we went to the most famous and overcrowded area Bas Cuvier where I did another long Parcour. One of the boulders included was „La Marie-Rose“, fb6A. It is an absolut classic, as it is the first fb6A in Fontainebleau and was first climbed long ago in 1946. Even though fb6A is not a though grade, this climb is though and tricky! Katinka struggeled on it on previous trips and never sent it, but this time she did it!
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| „Le Marie-Rose“, fb6A – Bas Cuvier © Axel Niermann |
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| „Le Marie-Rose“, fb6A – Bas Cuvier © Axel Niermann |
Now we are back in good old germany and our place of residence has settlet: Next week I have to attent a first introduction event for my Masters Degree in Computer Science in Freiburg where we will move into an apartment in Merzhausen!