The problem
Prise de Tête is a problem at Franchard Sablons in the
Fontainebleau ("Font") forest south-east of Paris, widely regarded as the best bouldering area in the world. The grade is around Font 5+/6a or V2/ 3'ish for North Americans. The problem is also #19 in the "Red circuit" at that area. Circuits are a concept conceived decades ago in Fontainebleau to make bouldering more relevant to multi-pitch or alpine climbing. Problems within a circuit, numbered discreetly with paint, are climbed in a strict consecutive sequence to simulate a long route. Much less fashionable these days; the paint marks now mainly serve to orientate people in finding specific individual problems.
The context
Sometime in the early 1990s, various firms in the US and Europe began selling
bouldering pads. Hardly a radical technology, pads could probably have been developed any time in the previous half-century or even before, but what really mattered was their cultural acceptance. Though there was surreptitious softening of landings with backpacks, puffy jackets, old mattresses, etc in places like UK gritstone for a decade or two previously, anyone wielding a purpose-built mat in, say, the late 1970s/ early 1980s when I began climbing, would have been mocked mercilessly.
By the turn of the millennium the bouldering pad had changed the world - for climbers, anyway. Rendered "safe", bouldering mushroomed into a huge new sub-sport, with all kinds of impacts from explosive usage growth at specific climbing areas - Squamish's Grand Wall forest is a good example - to major changes in gender participation to redefinition of the indoor climbing gym.
However my first bouldering pad purchase was prompted by a more mundane reason: becoming a dad. Bouldering venues seemed much more reasonable to inflict on a baby than cliffs for roped climbing (notably the ubiquitous British sea cliff!). Leo therefore visited places like Burbage and the Roaches in the UK's Peak district while still aged zero. The pad was used as often for changing nappies as falling on.
In 1999 my brainy nephew, Jeremy, who spent most of his 20's in a grand tour of the world's most prestigious academic establishments, moved to
HEC (pronounced ash-eh-say) near Versailles, for a master's course ostensibly in economics but apparently in partying. Presciently I had somehow inculcated him into climbing during his undergraduate years, so he also became a habitué of nearby Font. That year and the next we visited him several times, combining tourism in Paris for Shoko with bouldering for me.
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| Leo strikes an existentialist pose in St-Germain-des-Pres |
The most elaborate of these trips was at a weekend in spring 2001, just as Jeremy was finishing up at HEC. My sister Sally also joined us. We stayed in a cute boutique hotel in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, at the heart of Paris' once-bohemian, now just expensive,
Left Bank. Jeremy climbed with me on both days. In Saturday we went to Bas Cuvier, Font's most popular area. The next day started with brunch at a painfully-hip club, the Bermuda Onion, with which Jeremy had become acquainted. This was memorable primarily for two factors: that the food took hours to arrive (bad) and that the dining room had giant skylights which opened to let in the morning sun (cool).
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| Jeremy, Sally, Leo and Shoko at the Bermuda Onion, great food once it arrived |
Jeremy and I then escaped to Font for an afternoon/ evening session. We chose Franchard Sablons for reasons I have long since forgotten. Probably because Jeremy had checked it out before and found it to be quieter at weekends. By chance - and this really made the day - there was one other group there, but they were true Font royalty: Jo Montchauseé, the
guidebook writer and pioneer; his son; son's girlfriend and their other friends. We ended up working on a few problems with them. These days many people's experience of bouldering is almost entirely of this type - big groups playing on a single boulder - but for me at the time it was a total novelty.
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| The younger Montchauseé crew (and Jeremy) |
Jo mentioned something to me that stuck in my mind (and has had some resonance subsequently): that, despite (or, perhaps, because of) the opportunity on his doorstep and supportive dad, his son had taken no interest in climbing until his late teens - but was now psyched and climbing hard.
The ascent
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| Jeremy styling (do people still say this?) Prise de Tête |
I don't remember much about Pris de Tete. Mostly that it looked easy but in reality was slopey and baffling. Montchausee père et fils demonstrated various ways to do it effortlessly. The rest of us flailed but got up it eventually. Jeremy may have done it before me; generally he was climbing well at this time. The diary just notes that "
we took ages".
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| Another shot of Jeremy at Franchard Sablons - identity of this problem now lost |
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| Ditto |
Subsequent ascents
I have not been back to Font since this visit. Bouldering did continue to be a genuine, if unambitious, interest for a few more years subsequently. Notably I discovered and developed several areas in the
west of Ireland near the family cottage, including a beachside V6 that made the "Irish Top 50" list in the first Bouldering in Ireland
guidebook, and a massive area of bogland granite, Derryrush.
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| The Barn - a fun moderate boulder in the Derryrush area in southern Connemara which I discovered in 2004 |
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| Butterfingers, V3 - another addition to Derryrush from 2004 |
Unfortunately three arm/ wrist fractures between 2009 and 2013 have made me very wary of ground falls, even on to pads, and the horrific talus under most Squamish boulder problems has reinforced that. I hardly ever boulder outside now. I like to think that would change if I ever found myself at a bouldering area with genuinely flat landings. Even looking back at the old Font photos is quite inspiring.
