Europa Files: Part V Fontainebleau

Me, Making the front page of the Tahoe Paper while sending the amazing 'Welcome to the Future V12'

A photo of small amazing area in Switzerland from a great friend and fellow bone crusher Gu Jorg


So after leaving Switzerland we made the drive to Font. We passed through the border in Basel which is where a place that sounds interesting. The overall area is called the Baseljura. This is just one of those amazing thing s about Europe and the depth and richness of their climbing heritage as it holds some of the earliest 8b & 8b+ routes in the world.
We continued on into the French high way system, which is quite expensive until we made it to Font. I seem to have a gravitational pull to this amazing place. I feel a real affinity to this place a real thirst that leads me to devise ways in which to live there instead of just mere trips. I am sure you have a heard the reasons for its excellence. It holds the amazing stone, the most developed concentration of Font grade 7 & 8 in the world(read V6 to V15) and a beautiful French cultural experience to boot.
We were able to find a nice country gite close to one of the older areas of the vast forest called Buthiers. This was a great place to get some climbing in because since Font rains a lot it's one of the quicker drying areas. This turned out to be quite the gift as we were able to climb on a couple of amazing boulders even when most of the forest was wet. I was able to send my first 8A in the forest, which translates roughly to V11.
This particular trip to Font was quite bi-polar in the way of weather, in that it was particularly rainy and we had to deal! But this made for some very interesting rainy day missions to Paris where many conflicting situations arose that have only become terribly hilarious upon the respite of blogging.
The end of the trip was a mix of good and frustrating as well. The other travel mates, Noah and Ryan took off ten days earlier than I and I stayed the duration with my beautiful French Family within the forest. This experience is a happy beautiful one but the weather that accompanied was less beautiful in that the projects that had become so near and dear myself were perpetually wet. Ce La Vie dans la Foret. But I love it all, the family, the friends, the rock and of course the immersion into speaking french again.
AR-I will add some photos from the recent past.