Last week, Séb Berthe and Hugo Parmentier undertook what they described as 'one of our biggest projects of this year' - climbing 100 different 7A boulders in Fontainebleau in a single day.

As if this weren't hard enough already, the two climbers decided to travel between the boulders by fair means, that is, using only the power of their bodies, walking, running, or cycling.

Starting the day at 04:30, north of Fontainebleau in Rocher Canon, Séb and Hugo cycled 70 kilometres before finally finishing the challenge to the south of Fontainebleau at L'Elephant, at roughly ten o'clock. By the time they had reached home again, it was midnight.

'The idea [was] born from a discussion between roommates' Séb told us, 'and was fed by the experience of our Font locals friends. Initially, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the first 7A of Fontainebleau, aka La Joker (White 13) (f7A), we wanted to complete "only" 70x7a, keeping some bonus in case we would be fast enough to climb some more'.

After six weeks of discussion, organisation, and boulder selection, they decided to give it a go, and quickly realised (well, after six or so hours of constant 7A/+ bouldering) that they had a good chance at the full one hundred.

'Climbing our selection of the most delicate, stunning, and classic boulders of the 7a/+ range... In the middle of the day as things we going good and as we were in advance in our schedule, we decided to go hard and add the bonus boulders we had in our list to reach the 100!'

'We laughed, screamed, sweated (a lot), struggled and shared an ultra intense journey. A week later, we are still struggling with fatigue and skin'.

Séb and Hugo have said they hope that the challenge will inspire others to undertake similar 'low-CO2-emission projects' close to home. Whilst not everyone has Fontainebleau on their doorstep, this kind of challenge can be easily adapted to ones surroundings.Last year we saw a similar project from the Wide Boyz, who speed-climbed the Peak section of The Classic Rock Round, and many have brought similar approaches to the indoor scene, as seen in this video from 2019. 

The two climbers took exactly 139 attempts each to complete their respective 100 boulders, with Hugo flashing 41 of the boulders he hadn't previously climbed, and Seb contributing 39 flashes. Each and every boulder of the '100-7A-day' was filmed. 'Stay tuned', they told us, 'a whole film about this adventure will come!'

We got in touch with Séb and Hugo to ask how they approached the challenge, which boulders had them doubting themselves, and what their top three 7A's in Font are.

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Your email mentioned a few boulders that had you doubting yourselves, Excalibur (f7A+) for you Hugo, Bull Dog (f7A+) for you Seb, and La Médaille en Chocolat (Black + White 2b) (f7A) for both of you - what was it about these boulders that had you worried?

Séb: We actually worried about many of them... Either they were physically harder than others, or technically! Bull Dog was more about finding the good beta (we had never climbed on the boulder before), but [it was] also hard physically, and [had] no conditions at all because of the sun. La médaille was about trusting the feet!

Hugo: It was pretty stressfull for some of them as we pre-checked only half of the circuit/boulders (I mean we did some of the boulders in the past, like in the last 10 years for some of them and the other half was onsight/flash).

Adding the pressure of the timing (around 17 hours of daylight) we needed to be precise and lose as less tries as possible! It was really spicy especially on the technical ones!

Were there any boulders that you were really worried about even before the challenge started?

Hugo: Le Sourire de David. A 7 metre higball on really small uncut edges. It shares the beginning of the well known La Merveille (f8A+). I was super stressed of cutting a finger open or just not holding the small edges at 7pm haha. 

For Seb it was La Médaille en Chocolat (Black + White 2b) (f7A) in Apremont. Super slaby and sloppy footwork into the jump, [it] was the boulder with the biggest douts before starting.

But finally, these two were pretty ok! Some unexpected boulders cost us a lot more like Excalibur (f7A+)/L'Angle Ben's (f7A+) for me, and La Diagonale (f7A+) for both of us!

You journeyed between the crags by carbon neutral means, were there any journeys that really sapped your energy?

Hugo:  I believe the travel between the Trois Pignons and L'Elephant was the longer one, and the most tiring especially being at the end of the day.

But these travels were at the same time relaxing for the upper body and a nice time to talk/eat/drink, and a time to share the experience lived during the lasts boulders, and a little time to prepare ourselves for the next ones. We did 70km in total, mostly by bike and a bit running between the blocs.

What were your biggest strategies for the day? Did you think about overhangs vs slabs, which boulders would be harshest on the skin, etc?

Hugo: Preparing the circuit and choosing our list was really crazy! Discovering in details the forest and it's hidden gems! It was a big deal as well as there is for sure a thousand boulders in the grade 7a/+ in Font! To celebrate the climbing in Font we wanted to have as many Font styles and classics as possible but also some stunning and beautiful forgotten lines. We wanted to have some mantles, traverses, delicate arêtes, low overhangs, sit starts, conventional boulders, jumps etc. 

Séb: We wanted to have the best boulders in our list whatever they were, hard or not for the skin...

Hugo: Preparing the circuit was super exciting. Our only other strategy was excluding the super crimpy lines in the warmest hours of the day.

Did you have anyone 'managing' the project for you, i.e. telling you which boulder was next, whether it was a sit start etc, or was it only you two working it out yourselves?

Séb: No we were dealing everything by ourselves, just the two of us. Two friends, cameramen Jerome Tanon and Cyril Salomon were following us, but we had the lead on the itinerary. We had remebered as much as we could about the roads, the betas, the sitstarts...

We still got some punctual help with water, coffee, spotting and other things from friends who were in the forest during that day: Soline, Tess, Elise, Zoé, Hélène, Manon, Florent...

Did you do a lot of beta research?

Séb: We looked at least on every boulder in Bleau.info, watching videos and trying to remember as much beta as we could, we had only climbed and seen half of the circuit/boulders before. A part of the challenge was to make a choice between all the 7a boulders of the forest, which wasn't easy as they are so many of them!

Any plans for similar challenges?

Séb: They are still secret for the moment hehe ;-) Yes we have some ideas! Nothing concrete yet. With a bit of creativity you can imagine many different nice things to do close to home or ecopoint travelling. As this one was really fun, we can't wait to do other ones in the future!

Finally, if you could choose a 'top three' boulders from the day, what would they be and why?

Hugo: Grains de Poussière (f7A): amazing traverse on slopers. Just Perfect.

Arcane (f7A+): high, bad landing, great set of holds ;)

L'Œil du Cyclone (f7A): perfect rock/holds and a cool comp style boulder.

Séb: It is actully quite hard to choose, all the boulders we climbed were actually really nice! Nothing to throw away! It is incredible how good this forest is in terms of high quality boulders!

If I really have to choose, I would say:

La Diagonale (f7A+): because it was an intense moment at the end of the day. We had to fight really hard, the timing was really tight, the help between each other in order to succeed was great!

L'Angle Ben's (f7A+): because it is a hard, incredible, classic boulder.

Le Bond de l'Hippopotame (Red 17b) (f7A): because it's a great jump quite high, not the best landing. The moment was quite special during our day because the sector was quite crowded and the people were really psyched on our challenge, following us between the boulders and cheering!