krissy HIKES everything!

Le 14 Juin, 2009.

We packed up this morning and are now off to Switzerland. Graubunden is the name of the town and it’s near the larger town of Cresciano. There we are hoping to find Magic Wood and cooler temperatures. Ben is also hoping to find his climbing mojo there as well. Je joke juste.
The last few days have been very good for me. I climbed Croix de Fer in Bas Cuvier (only 3 attempts). That is by far the hardest problem I’ve done. Font 7B. The next day I did a variation of Cortomaltese (7A) and finally, last night I did number 22 red/La Marie Rose!! Font’s first 6A, and the hardest 6A ever (in mine and Ben’s opinion). The guidebook describes it as “ requiring finesse and precision of placement”, so clearly it was meant for me. J
Ben worked a few really hard problems, but the heat/sun/rain/humidity, was on our side, but I got some cool photo’s of him working them.

Random Thoughts:
Ben came up with a really cool name for a cat…Barbizon Le Chat. Barbizon is a beautiful little town here. We were just driving around one day and out it popped. It’s good. It’s so good that it makes us want to get another cat just so we can name him Barbizon Le Chat. My cat Josee has a new boycatfriend (Daj) and so in the fall, when she moves back in with me, I’m thinking she might miss him…so maybe another cat would be good? Or maybe we should wait until we can afford one.

Nutella is good on Pain au Chocolat.

It is also good in Oatmeal.

Ben’s bouldering pad and a few pairs of shoes are worn out already.

Bad Weather, Moles, and Allergies

The weather has not been cooperating with us lately. It is either raining or too hot...oh well. So we are off to Switzerland in the next couple of days.

This morning we woke up to a mole digging under our tent - he had a whole tunnel system built.

Krissy was scared he was going to dig through the bottom of the tent - so we moved it.

We did manage to get some climbing in yesterday. Krissy had a bleausard compliment her on her climbing after she completed a line at Bas Cuvier (C'est beau, ce n'est pas facile - or something to that effect). Then she proceeded to climb Le Croix de Fer - a 7B - in like two tries! She doesn't think it is a 7B...I climbed it and it is pretty hard - pockets - monos for big fingers. Then she WORKED a Frites (5C+) and could not do it...ahh font.

I managed to climb nothing yesterday. I had one of the worst days of climbing ever. Near the end of the day I did start feeling a little better and fell of the last move of L'abbe Resina (7C/C+) in the heat.

Today we slept in and are going to climb later weather permitting.

random stuff:
krissy had a bad allergy attack last night/this morning - "slept" with tissue in her nose - a la Molly

moles dig fast!

bugs like to get in back packs

Ben is acting, or should I say Sounding more like John.

Notre Dame is big - we happened upon it randomly when looking for chalk

there is no good climbing chalk in france

Happy Birthday Krissy

June 4 was Krissy’s birthday. We took a rest day and just hung out in Fontainebleau. Her birthday present was us buying two large coffees from a café in Font and then visiting a few bakeries and choosing something from each of them. Then we went back home (our tent) and cooked an extra large supper of pasta, potatoes and canned ham. Desert was some of the pastries we bought during the day. This was followed by watching arrested development on our laptop under the stars, laying on crash pads. Oh, and Krissy nearly managed to finish a whole baguette on her own in under an hour.

Yesterday (June 7), Krissy managed to finish her project in Franchard Isatis that she worked for two days - her longest project ever. We don’t yet know what it is called or how hard it is, but it is a pretty neat problem out a very steep boulder. The video kinda shows what it is like. After Krissy finished her project I had planned to climbed, but as I started warming up the rains started. Then it hailed. Then it rained more. So we just checked out a couple of new boulders that we may go back two in the next few days.

Today we got up early and headed to Trois Pignons. I wanted to work on L’integral and Eclipse again. But, same story, as we warmed up it started raining. So we headed back to the car for a hot chocolate and a snack. Krissy is also apparently using our down time right now for a nap in the car. It is looking like no climbing again for today…Hopefully tomorrow.

The video shows Krissy’s project and a super cool easier problem called Le Statique at Franchard Isatis. I tried Le Statique when I was here a few years ago and I remember it feeling very hard. I was able to actually climb it this time. I remember seeing it in old Pusher ads when I first started climbing, so I have always wanted to climb it.

Photos:
Ben in Barbizon
Nail crimping on Duel (8A slab)
Birthday food
Krissy on steep problem in Franchard Cusiniere
Ben on Le Statique

Some random stuff:
Baguettes are good
Nuttela is good
Hail is bad
Rain is bad
Font slopers are good
Font features are good
Font foot holds are bad
Font friction is bad
Pain au chocolat is good
Allergies are bad
Bugs in tents are bad
Birthdays in France are good
Completing projects is good
Emails from home are good
Sleeping in everyday is good
Climbing is good
Rest days are bad
Being in Europe for the whole summer is good.

A couple of photos from the last couple of days

We went and saw the Eiffel Tower. It was insanely busy! The rest are some climbing from the last couple days.

Crazy People!

So we have power again…The fuse in our power converter blew and it has taken some time to get back to where we can charge camera batteries, computer batteries, and other such things needed to make these updates. Hopefully it will not be so long between them now. Today we were able to find the last piece of the battery charging puzzle.

Ben had planned to climb this evening, but just before he was going to start warming up it began to rain - so we edited two little video of the bouldering we have been doing the last couple of days. It has been a pretty productive last few days in Font, where we were able to tick off many of the classic lines. Now that we have some of the easier ones out of the way it is time to set our sites on getting a couple of harder lines before the weather gets hot again and we head off to another area. The weather looks good the next few days so hopefully we will be able to get down to business and tick a bunch of projects…a hard life I know.

The last two days were rest days. We were both so sore we could hardly move. In Font, your muscles give out before your skin wears down. Imagine that.

So we think we have our eating routine down. Cereal and oatmeal are our options for breakfast (and of course pressed coffee). Tuna or Egg sandwiches are easy for lunches at the bouldering areas. Add a scoop or two of Nutella on a cracker or type of fruit and we’re set. Couscous and pasta are easy and efficient for supper, and since Krissy has decided to pause on the vegetarianism, our sources of protein are whatever is cheap…canned meats, lentilles and sausages, hamburger or chicken once in a while. Wine is also super cheap. .75 e is the cheapest we’ve found and it’s pretty good. So we sip on some wine during supper.

In exciting news we have had a crazy guy scaring people in our campground the last two nights! Two nights ago he was walking in the woods behind our tent…and around our tent with no lights. Last night he was back and actually was talking to us and our German neighbours. He told us the sites were his and we had to leave. Any way, after a few more interactions with him the campground host chased him out with a shovel or something like that! And them called the police. Exciting! We kept a big knife in the tent…..

A couple of videos for you…..

HOT!!!

Today it is HOT, like 37C hot - without humidity! We got up late, had a slow breakfast, edited a short climbing video and looked at some of the photos we have taken the last few days. It is way too hot to do anything. At this moment we are sitting at Franchard Isatis waiting for the temperature to go down so we can hopefully climb this evening. You sweat just sitting here…Hopefully these temperatures will pass in the next few days so we can try and finish off some harder projects. If the weather doesn’t cool we will probably head to the mountains and higher elevations in search of better conditions.

Yesterday we climbed at the Cul de Chien area in Trois Pignons. There were so many climbers there it was crazy. The were actually a lot of older climbers there, probably in their 50’s and 60’s, many of whom could climb pretty hard. When I got on the Cul de Chien later in the afternoon there had to have been like 30 people around the problem. It was like climbing for an audience. The Cul de Chien is definitely one of the most fun problems I have ever done. I knew about the problem before getting France, but I did not realize the move you do to get out the roof using a heel hook involved a mono! So you go from a jug to a mono to a three finger pocket to a jug all over a perfect sand landing in the middle of the forest. I actually climbed it twice I thought it was so fun.

Now off for more relaxing and waiting for the temperature to cool down.

These are some photos from the last couple of days. Franchard Isatis, Cul de Chien, and Fontainebleau.

Fontainebleau Video

Here is a short video from Font yesterday at Trois Pignons. Conditions were much better than the last couple of days. The first problem is Total Eclipse, an 8A+. It is really hard, the next good day I will be going back to try it or some variation of it. I was able to climb a 7B+ on the same roof relatively quickly and will be going back to do the sit start to it, it is called L'intergrale - 8A.