Bleauvember: Raymond Blues

Two weeks of cold, but fantastic weather (i.e., dry) have meant lots of climbing and no blog posts. Now the humidity has set back in with a chilly vengeance, but we have been reluctant to give up on getting out and so persevered with afternoon 'climbing sessions'. These seem to involve wandering round stroking the wet rock a bit, hanging off the odd dry hold and grumbling about crappy conditions, the morals of climbing wet rock and such. The next day we become more optimistic, and then repeat, and so the cycle is going. On Thursday we headed for a long overdue trip to Franchard Raymond, to revisit some projects that we were sure would be dry...

Sun and blue skies made us optimistic for smashing out a few problems; in particular Futebol, a striking bulging arete, Grosse Colère, a long, pumpy traverse on giant flakes, and a number of quartzy roof problems that reside in a pit of fun, secteur Tectonique des Plaques. Raymond has a bit of a walk in, and we had become very positive by the time we reached the huge boulder that centres Tectonique des Plaques, to find it distinctly...slimy. Hands were forced. We sacked it off.

To the traverse!...

The traverse was worse, it had several small waterfalls irrigating the key finish holds. Unperturbed, we used the dry parts as an awesome, swingy warm up, naturally avoiding the wet or delicate features - in Font these are fragile in damp conditions. 

And finally, to Futebol. This was, ostensibly, dry. Sam worked it a few times and then it went...almost. He was about as close to a tick as you could get, but sadly the top was a bit moist, just enough to slide a heel off. The only thing smashed that day was Sam's arse, when he fell off the very top of Futebol.

We sacked it off...

...and Amber had to drive home.