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So I'm going to be in France in about a month. I'll have 2-3 days to spend at the font. Just wondering if anyone has been there and what they would recommend as far as problems to get on and where to find a decent guide to the area. Thanks for the help.

man you are going to love it.

the problem with font is the fact that there are 1000's and 1000's of quality lines.

if i had to choose only three areas i would probably hit bas cuvier, franchard cuisiniere, and either l'elephant or le cul de chien.

the circuits provide tons of fun without a guidebook but you will most likely need both a guidebook and a topo to find the areas. Font is a huge region and you can drive 40 minutes between areas..

as far as English guidebooks go i recommend the one written by Montchausse and Godoffe as a general guide. the directions can be confusing though. the older guide by Gough has good topos but is not as well done and hard to find. the new guidebook 7 and 8's has only non traverseing problems v5 and harder. (there 1115 of them) it has fantastic directions and is beautiful! even if you are not a strong climber you can always get that guidebook for the directions and then just use the circuits for easier problems.

If you answer a few questions i can give more specific advice.

where are going to be staying?
how hard of problems are you looking for?
will you have a car?

i also have some beta on gites if you are thinking of renting one. it is a deal with a few friends.

you can get the generic guidebook from amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... s&n=507846

and you can get the guidebook 7+8 from here
http://bleau.info/

that site also has a ton of info on font and a forum for specific questions.

The only English guidebook I could find was out of print and I had to buy it on Amazon market place. It was Escalade a Fontainebleau; Les Plus Beaux Sites Et Blocs, By Jo and Francoise Montchausse and Jacky Godoffe . French is still avl I think. Since you are just going to be there for 2 days I wouldnt bother buying a guide and jut hit some of the more developed areas. There are so many areas the size of Rocktown, HP and so on within 1 hour from center of Font its hard to choose. On such a short time frame I would hit Cul de Chien, Bas Cuvier or Franchard Cuisiniere. My guide is packed somewhere in boxes or I would let you use it or copy some pages. We went to many areas big and smaller, none of them let use down. AMAZING !!!

Just pick a place and follow the circuit. Depends on your level on what color you need. Black and White tend to be hard and yellow, orange and blue seem to be do able. The climbing movement and the stone are hard to read and took me about a week to really get a decent groove going.

Best trip of my life, I plan on going back every time I can afford it.

Have a good trip ! Eat plenty of cheese, bread, pastries and drink lots of wine....

Thats funny, we were both posting at the same time and had just about the same area rec's. Watch out for the snakes !

yea, you get bit by an asp you might end up in a hospital for a week while your friends keep climbing. and they might have to extend their trip and stay and climb longer to make sure you recover.

so watch out for snakes and friends looking for an excuse to stay sticking snakes on your crashpad.

I have some good pics of her in the hopital. How do you post in the topic ?

you need to put the pics up on a server and then link them from there using the img tag

if you don't have server space i can lend you some just this once.

speaking of posting here is a shot to get you psyched.
my friend jef climbing in bas cuvier:



i have two font galleries on my site:
http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~mpschaef ... tpics.html

http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~mpschaef ... 2pics.html

maybe someday I will get a third up.

http://www.redriverclimbing.com/album_p ... ic_id=1562
http://www.redriverclimbing.com/album_p ... ic_id=1561

Reasons not pick up snakes in France and to to watch your landings when working highballs. Poor girl, it was her first climbing trip. Is she still climbing Merrick ?

yea last i heard she was still into climbing. which is pretty cool, all things considered. she is a tough kid.

if you put img tags around the urls then they will show up as images.