Pennine Lines w/c 14 august 2023
|| Probably warm and damp || Nice in Font though ||
Le Flipper, in autumn conditions || Climber: Steve Royle
|| Focus On... ||
The Forest
This is a fairly lightweight one this week as I’m away on the annual family holiday and the internet here is ludicrously slow. I’m in Fontainebleau, a destination many would not think of for a climbing trip in high summer, but we’ll get back to that in a minute. But the main point I want to convey is that I have a beer with my name on it right now so this is going to be a short one, for which I make no apologies!
As I mention once or twice in Grit Blocs, in the world of gritstone bouldering we tend to look up to Fontainebleau; we borrow Font grades, and we use ‘Font style’ as the highest accolade we give to a problem. But the weird thing about British climbing’s relationship with Font is our tendency to characterise the climbing there as being exclusively rounded topouts on rippled slopers, reducing it to a stereotype and ignoring the wealth of climbing styles on offer. Font is in fact pretty well equipped with savage crimpy walls, horrendous cracks, tendon-snapping pocket pulling, steep basic pulling, one-movers, long stamina problems, low physical roofs, highballs deserving of route status and just about everything in between.
Maybe we concentrate on the slopey ‘Font style’ problems because that’s what we see as being unique to the area, and in fairness the classic Font ripples and general shape of the boulders is pretty unique, or at least markedly different to most UK sandstone. In contrast to our mainly escarpment-based sandstone venues the geological mechanism that gave rise to the boulders of Fontainebleau is, to be fair, completely different, so it’s no coincidence that the rock shapes and the climbing the shapes dictate is different. But still I think we’re often guilty of overlooking what Font really has to offer.
Summer circuits || Canche aux Merciers
Hand in hand with this stylistic pigeonholing of the Forest’s climbing comes a tendency, particularly among keen or lets say performance-focussed boulderers, to only think of Font as somewhere to visit in winter. This is all great, but you don’t have to get many Font trips under your belt before you become well versed with the names of all the quick-drying crags. Quick show of hands everyone who’s spent days mooching around 95.2, Apremont and 91.1 with other bored looking Brits waiting for the rock to dry? That should be all of you with your hands up now.
So yeah, Font has a lot going for it in August believe it or not. Firstly; it’s dry. Secondly; it’s dry. I realise this is the same as the first point but it’s so important it’s worth reiterating. You can just pick a crag and go there. No dramas. Even if it’s just chucked it down with a summer thunderstorm stuff is dry again really fast. If it’s not raining then the sun is out, and there’s hours and hours of daylight. So you can check out all those dingy shady crags you’d never dream of bothering with in winter. All those venues where it says “avoid during the hunting season” on Bleau.info are all good to go.
Still plenty of hard pulling to be found || Climber: John Coefield
“But isn’t it boiling?” I hear you cry. Well, yes it is, but that is so obvious and upfront that it’s easy to factor it into your mindset from the outset. It’s not like when you book a Font trip for Easter or October half term and deep down you expect it to be great conditions but it actually turns out to be surprisingly warm, but you still try the same hard projects you were eyeing up as winter goals so you trash you skin. The other important difference to the warms spells of spring and autumn, and indeed in stark contrast to the UK summer weather, is the humidity in Font in high summer is often very low. This buys you a lot of headroom in terms of tolerable climbing temperature - and even during heatwaves tolerable temps for the odd well-chosen project can still be found if you get up early and out first thing in the morning. And being a forest there’s always some shade, and most places have problems facing away from the sun - again in contrast to the Pennines where a LOT of crags face south west into the baking afternoon sun.
The other point that’s worth remembering too is it’s pretty quiet here in summer. There are always some climbers around but the crags are not subject to the same Glastonbury-esque crowds you see these days over Easter. Outside of its position in the climbing world Fontainebleau generally speaking isn’t a huge tourist area (in contrast to, say, the Peak District), so once there’s not many climbers on the scene it means there’s not many people around full stop. It’s often said that Parisians either head to Brittany or the south coast in summer, so it’s not unusual to have a world-class bouldering venue to yourself.
Character building on Font circuits || Climber: Dave Norton
Finally, and a point not be overlooked, is coming here in warmer temps where you don’t expect to be getting up hard projects can force you to climb easier problems - aka doing circuits. This is something which is really valuable for honing climbing technique, but something that Brits are especially reticent to do. We’ve all been on Font trips where someone, or indeed everyone, will refuse to attempt anything that doesn’t reach the magic grade of 7a or above. Usually because they (or rather we) know that doing a circuit opens you up to having to deal with everything thrown at you and taking an ego-bruising - there’s no picking and choosing, no just catering to your own strengths. This is the curse of being entirely performance-focussed - it’s too easy to get stuck into grade chasing, just going for the trophy problems and locking yourself out of the thousands upon thousands of superb circuit lines which litter the entire forest.
So if summer means you have to enjoy a few of those circuit problems it’s no bad thing. Truth be told it’s probably the best pre-grit technique tune-up you can have before the autumn seasons gets underway back home. Anyway, that’s enough for now, beer is calling.
|| SUPPORTED BY ||
|| Recently Through the lens ||
One from back home, with the heather at Burbage looking great of an evening.
|| Fresh Prints ||
The heather here in Font is also looking great around and about the forest; familiar but different. Here's a couple of the Peak heather at its best in the Print Shop.
