the nostalgia project: Prise de Tête, France (2001)

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.

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).

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.

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

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".

Another shot of Jeremy at Franchard Sablons - identity of this problem now lost

 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.

The Barn - a fun moderate boulder in the Derryrush area in southern Connemara which I discovered in 2004

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.

the nostalgia project - Corner Buttress, UK (1979)

The route

Wintours Leap is the largest cliff in the limestone climbing area of the Wye Valley on the English/ Welsh border. It rises about 100m above the muddy wooded banks of the Wye, a few km north of where that river flows languidly into the Bristol Channel. Corner Buttress (graded VD or "Very Difficult", about 5.4) is the easiest multi-pitch route at Wintours; a series of short walls and corners. The route has multiple variations and even an eliminate version called The Problems, linking a series of harder mini-pitches.

The context

Wintours was one of the closest cliffs to my school, in particular being conveniently en route to the Brecon Beacons in Wales, where the school's Duke of Edinburgh Award group customarily went backpacking. Despite many visits to Wintours between 1978 and 1987 - it was also not far from my undergraduate university in Bristol - I have just the one photo of the cliff in my archive. Even worse, for reasons long since forgotten, it primarily features my left foot.

EB boot /  fleece pant combo with out-of-focus view of the moderate end of Wintours Leap.
Corner Buttress is hidden somewhere behind my knee.

The ascent

Wintours is a hike-down-climb-back-out cliff. My main recollection from that first visit was stepping out of a minibus at a pullout straight above the cliff, noting how far below us was the river and feeling mildly nauseous. Other than that, I remember nothing. I am sure the climb proved unintimidating as the ledges between the pitches are very generously proportioned, breaking up the exposure.

From the diary: "First ever self-bought pint in Chepstow". The most memorable part of the day was roaming unsupervised around the town post-climbing with my friend James Fenner, ostensibly to buy fish and chips, but actually in search of a quiet pub. James was a year older than me, much taller at the time and annoyingly adult-looking. He scored a pint with ease - but refused to buy one for me. Somehow I also managed to convince the barman that I was eighteen. I still remember being asked "when were you born, then?", my brain freezing in a panic and seconds seemingly stretching out into minutes as I tried to calculate the required answer. From then on, boozing accompanied almost all of these school climbing trips. I assume drinking-age law in Britain is more rigorously enforced these days.

Subsequent ascents

The diary mentions Corner Buttress eight times in total. By my university years I had led it and  soloed it, both up- and downwards. For a while I became interested in a thin face, not in the guidebook, between an arete pitch on The Problems and a corner on the regular route. The ledge beneath was both flat and wide so although the face started about 30m off the ground it was effectively a highball boulder problem. The diary records that I succeeded on it in March 1983 and that - competitive! - "nobody else could do it!". I vaguely recall that the hardest move involved a left hand gaston, though it was years before I first heard the term in use. There was no chalk on it, so it could have been a first ascent. At the time it never struck me to write it up as something new; bouldering was still a very low profile activity and there were probably only a handful of problems around the UK that people had bothered to name, and certainly none halfway up a rambling limestone moderate. Anyway, objectively it was not very hard. I wrote "5c!" in my diary which is - don't laugh - about V2.

In May that year I was back again just before exams: "soloed a bit up Corner B. and read notes for a while". It would be nice to report that this attitude to revising was effective but the evidence is not supportive; two years later I graduated with a dismal 2:2.

in which we finally talk about climbing

James watching me on Coat and Tails  © Read Macadam, 2012

So three weeks after arriving in Squamish I finally got out climbing.

Actually this is not true, but it feels like it. Friends like Bob and Andy have dragged me out on the rock on several occasions. But today was the first time that I have climbed without feeling hurried or stressed and really been focused on what I was doing.

Today's objective was completing Coat and Tails, a problem at the obscure Powerline Boulders. I took an interest in this area as it is close to home and is advertised as having flat landings. I first visited with Read Macadam a few days ago. I know Read from the UAE/ Oman climbing scene, where he has unarguably held the title of strongest "local" for some years, and has done an excellent job of burning off visiting superstars. He is originally from Vancouver - hence over here on vacation - and was in the Canadian bouldering team in his youth. Unfortunately he has an arm fracture from an MTB accident (reaffirmation for me of my general principle of avoiding all other sports apart from climbing ...) so nobly looked after James and took photos. Coat and Tails didn't yield then, but looked possible for me as it is a rare instance of a Squamish problem entirely on real holds rather than slopey nothings.

Since then I have done a few finger-strengthening sessions on my Wedge, a clever portable training tool invented by my UK business partner Simon. He had handed me a prototype when in England. At less than one kg it was just about smuggle'able into our Canada baggage and then easily installed from a beam in the space under our garage.

The Wedge in Simon's Sheffield training laboratory, sorry, "office"

Climbing is of course all about grades (*). Coat and Tails is graded V5, a level which tiny Japanese girls in New York would barely bother with as a warm-up, but one that I have never managed at Squamish. (It is actually given V6 in some sources.) It took about an hour of work today and some significant bouts of trying-hard. Fingers were definitely working better than on the previous visit. All climbing is ridiculous but sit-start boulder problems especially so. Non-climbers may be baffled as to why anyone would bother with all of the following when you can reach the finishing hold on tip-toes from the ground:

- sit on arse in the mud under a two metre wide flat ceiling
- yard outwards from a big loose undercut flake to a decent hold at the lip
- hold a faux-front-lever whilst finger traversing half a metre leftwards to painful crimps
- heel hook right foot in ungainly fashion on that decent hold
- pull in hard on the heel whilst slapping up with right hand to a diagonal edge [fall off here multiple times]
- slap again with right hand to semi-pinch/ semi-side-pull a few cm higher [fall off here multiple times too]
- subtly modify right foot from heel hooking to pushing on small knob one cm to left
- throw heroically for giant finishing jug with left hand
- make a pointless half-move higher into the moss then declare victory
- boldly jump two metres back to the ground

Read suggested that all this nonsense could be reduced down to two dynamic moves and I have no reason to doubt him. But I am old and unbouncy.

Psyched! What's next?


* obviously I am joking: climbing is about good company, the joy of being outdoors and, er, stuff like that.