I have never gotten on with Font at the best of times, but lack of funds and dictated holiday periods made Bleau in January sound like not too bad an idea.
We arrived late on Saturday and woke up to cold, but decent conditions on Sunday. Still tired from our trip we wandered around nearby Buthiers scoping out potential projects. Sadly, this was to be our best day out. It snowed on Tuesday and the temperature never got above -5C.
The rest of the week was spent attempting to clean problems and giving up in despair as you can never seem to get all of the ice off the slopers and given that this is Font, nearly every problem contains at least one requisite sloper. Also, our fingers and toes would pretty much go instantly numb. One day our car thermometer registered 12F (-11C) in the afternoon!
I did however manage to find this gem with big sharp holds way off circuit at Isatis. Yes, I found the only pocketed overhang in all of Font, but sadly, it’s just a 6a+.
Angle Incidence, Isatis
It was nice to get away, but equally, I don’t feel in a rush to go back. Is it just me or is Font not all that it’s made out to be? I will admit, the general style of climbing (technical, tedious, err… tenuous) was never my thing, but all those boulders… and I don’t want to climb any of them… except maybe Carnage, but I’m not standing in a queue to boulder.
