So this was, unfortunately, our last day in Fontainebleau. As usual, we got going late, because, as usual, it was absolutely freezing in the morning. We ate breakfast at the campsite and lunch in the parking lot, which at this point was unfortunately mostly cloudy. We had more-or-less avoided rain for the entire trip, except for the very first night in the campsite at Fontainebleau and during the original drive down to Orpierre, so we had been pretty lucky, but we wanted to finish without rain. Luckily we did.
We decided to go to Bas Cuvier now that it was no longer the weekend (making it less crowded) and now that I had gotten a bit more used to the poffed footholds. When we got to Cuvier, then, it was cloudy and chilly but manageable. After lunch, we gathered our stuff from the car and headed over.
We mostly worked on the easier Red Circuit problems around Cuvier. I decided to try La Nescafé, a 6A (V3) that has a very slopey topout that I had tried a couple years ago but had slid off of (almost squishing poor Chris, who was spotting me, in the process). The landing is good, and it's not too high, but it still kind of sucks. This time, it took me a couple times to get up to the topout, but this time I stuck to the top when I got there. It was still a struggle, and a couple Frenchies started to watch, and said "Come on" because I don't think they thought I would know allez, but I made it, so that was good. It was a tricky boulder to get off of, too. Nick said "Nika, your descent was just as graceful as your send."
Then, after that, we did some more Red Circuit problems. Then Nick did La Marie Rose, the first 6A (V3) in the forest historically, in a Daddy-style "flash," meaning that he flashed it for about the tenth time. He has the problem bizarrely wired since he loves to do it every time he goes to Fontainebleau. There were too many people crowded around it at that point, though, for me to want to do it again. I had actually done it once before when I was here 4 years ago (which was long before Nick did it, btw) but I didn't remember any of the beta. So I did a few other problems and then went back to it. Interestingly, there seems to be two different ways to do it -- an English (thuggish) and a French (stylish-with-a-Gaston) way. Nick obviously did it the English way. When I walked up to it this trip, I initially did about two tries in the French way, because I'm pretty sure that that's how I might have eventually done it when I was working on it 4 years ago. After I popped off twice, I decided to do it with the English beta -- and I sent again, easily. So that was good.
Getting off that boulder, by the way, is the crux. You either can scarily chimney down between two boulders, which is not easy, or you can do a scary lean-and-fall-across the gap, from which you have to pull yourself across the gap, onto the next boulder, and then continue your descent from boulder #2 -- which is still not easy. So I again gathered an audience who were watching to see whether I'd make it off. There were a couple people watching who didn't speak a common language, but both spoke English as their second language, so they were trying to figure out what I was going to do in their not-so-good English.
So that day was good, in the end, since Nick and I both repeated two 6As (well, one was new for me). Then, after we were done but before dinner, we hiked up a hill near the campsite to go see the sunset. Nick did a death-march because we were worried we would miss it -- and then when we got up we found that we were like 30 minutes early with nothing to do. Unfortunately, there were clouds low in the horizon, so in the end we didn't even get to see too much of the sunset -- it sort of dropped behind the clouds before it actually set.
Then we went back to the campsite for dinner. On the walk back to our site, one of the many cats in the campground took an interest in me and Nick and followed us back to our site. It was unclear whether this was a feral cat or not -- there seems to be a lot of feral cats around, but the campground owners also seem to own some cats and dogs that don't seem to have collars. Anyways, this cat that followed us back was extremely friendly. As Nick and I cooked dinner (a chicken curry-type thing that turned out to be way too spicy), both this cat and some other cats that appeared out of the woods (it was after dark now) showed an interest, but the other cats were much less aggressive than this one at trying to get our food.
At one point, friendly-cat did manage to grab a raw chicken scrap before Nick and I could scare it off, which we felt bad about. But I figured that if it was bad the cat would probably puke it up later. Nick and I had to get out waterbottles to scare off this cat, it was so agressive. Nick squirted the kitty once (gently) with water, and the cat ran off, but it was back in like two minutes. Then I figured out that just shaking the waterbottle had the same effect as squirting, so we did that until we managed to clean up all the food.
Even after the food was gone, though, the cat really liked us. It even jumped up into my lap while I was sitting there for no apparent reason. At one point, Nick and I both walked up to the bathroom blocks, and the cat followed right along with us, and sat outside meowing until we came back out. So this was honestly the friendliest cat, by far, that I have ever met.
So that was it for climbing on our trip, unfortunately! It was getting colder and colder, though, so it was probably for the best. The adventure for our final day, Tuesday, was planned to be a stop at Versailles before catching a ferry back to England.
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