UKC

Myself and friends have some spare time in February and were thinking of planning a trip to Font, we were wondering if its possible to climb at this time of year, ie. is it to wet, snow cold etc. 

also what are the best guide books 

Thanks Emlyn 

Obviously the answer is 'it depends' however I've been at that time of year on several occasions and found excellent conditions.

It would just be down to your luck. You could be like Shauna Coxy at Christmas, go for a week and only get one days climbing.

The best all round guide *is* (arguably) "Fun Bloc" from Jingo Wobbly.

Complete pot luck.

If it's dry and cold the friction is superb.

If it's at all wet - wet snow, sleet, hail, rain, drizzle, moist fog etc the climbing will be crap.

I'd be inclined to make a last minute snap decision based on the most up to date weather forecast.

If the weather is crap, there isn't much to do in the area, apart from the Chateau, or get a train into Paris, or walk in the forest - which can provide quite testing navigation. 

Total gamble, have look a few days before and make a final decision. 

I went for a week in Feb a few years ago. We arrived at about 10 am after driving through the night to the best conditions I've ever known. Had a great day at cuvier quickly ticking off all the sandbags I'd tried before, despite the lack of sleep... then it rained. After 4 days of going area to area looking for dry rock there was still an inch of ice coating some of the shady classics. 

It'll either be amazing or unclimbable.

Worst case scenario the Karma climbing/bouldering wall is great!

Where is that?

http://karma.ffme.fr/index.php/informations

Thank you! I've been going to Font for 36 years and never knew it existed. Does it get very crowded on wet days?

It's fairly new. Only opened 3 or 4 years ago. It wasn't busy the day we visited but that was on a Friday at the end of a good week in Font so I suppose a lot of people would have had their fill of bouldering by then. Do you know there is another wall down at Buthiers? It's ok but as good as Karma.

No didn't know about that either. 

I've had several trips to Font ruined by bad weather, but over the years have done day trips to Paris on the train and visited Fontainbleau Chateau a couple of times. The latter is worth seeing if only for the gaudy opulence - no wonder they chopped their heads off

As I mentioned earlier the forest is a great place to practice your navigation in bad weather.

This is my fourth winter in Font and it's been by far the worst (but I don't care because I tweaked a finger). I don't know what's the weather been like recently in Britain, but since early December it's been extremely wet here and we've been battered by very strong gales. It just never seems to stop. Maybe the storm will die down by February, who knows? So it's very much a gamble. You can have great conditions, or you can havenonstop rain interspersed with warm, still days with so much condensation it's as if it just rained. (It barely ever snows though; we had maybe half an inch in December and it was gorgeous, but it melted the morning after.)

My advice: if you do come here, make it at least two weeks. One week is too much of a gamble, but that's just me. (Sure there's always the climbing wall in Font, but do you really want to spend your holidays indoors at a place that the French BMC paid for with its members' contribution so that the pros could train [a third of the gym is only for pros] while anchors and bolts are rusting at countless crags throughout the country? (/rant))

As for guidebooks, if you're operating in the 5s and 6s the 5+6 series has the best formatting IMO.

"If the weather is crap, there isn't much to do in the area, apart from the Chateau, or get a train into Paris"

Complete nonsense. The forest is delightful for walking and cycling almost any time and the French love their history and culture (and sadly the English too often ignore it all): you could spend months exploring small monuments and villages. Outside Versaille, the most overblown historic palace in western Europe, there are many major tourist venues, including Milly la Foret, with its themed walks, galleries etc (and which is often used as a bouldering accommdation base). These modern days, where a phone or tablet Ap will translate from French, poor language skills are not even an excuse. Then you get to drink and eat at reasonable prices for the high quality in lovely places.

It depends very much what you're into. Apart from the boulders, I think the whole of Northern France is basically hell on earth, but even worse as the people are less diverse.

Boring.

I don't love their history and culture.

Uh huh.

Although I've had some really delicious stuff in bistros in the area, and I liked that place with the simple food and huge portions at Dame Juanne, I've also been presented with some of the most disgusting dishes I've encountered in my lifetime. For you sir, we have the small portion of tagliatelle hidden under a mountain of kidneys and covered in a bucket of double cream. There was probably some garlic in there as well as the kidneys and cream, but it was basically just kidneys and cream. This was part of a menu in which every dish was themed around cream and cheese. Apart from the food, it was a lovely bistro...

Why don't you read what I've written......?

Shame on you Jon

If you don't like local culture take you own for rainy days.. The walking is complex often surprisingly rough and  hilly (most climbing is in a transition zone between the plateau top and valleys) and as a boulderer you have the extra benefit of sussing out new posibilities.

Who eats food at ramdom these days ... you follow recommendations from friends and the net and choose items you like and if the menu looks dissapointing go elsewhere. Most food I eat is low to mid cost with a lot of produce taken home.

Wow, so much bitterness. Did you strain a pulley?

@Offwidth: about the cycling, it's more limited than you'd think because mountain bikes aren't allowed on paths less than 2.5m and/or sandy with rocks (because of erosion, presumably). So basically anything that looks cool and remotely Moab-like is (theoretically) off. Of course that still leaves you with hundreds of kilometres of more "standard" dirt paths, but it's probably no different than any forest in the UK (well other than the pine trees maybe?).

There's also a bunch of prehistoric petroglyphs scattered throughout the forest, though they're hard to find...

I did,  you hardly praised the walking and ignored pretty much everything else. It's easy to find a place boring when you don't bother to look at what is on offer. I've spent over an hour per trip recently in the Milly cheese shop alone where the shared love is so clear they now sometimes stock some Colton Basset Stilton, after a pal prised its qualities. Even ignoring specialist shops and markets, supermarket quality is usually impressive. Lovely fresh food if you want to cook for yourself and some amazing wine. A Baume de Venice I found last year was pure wow and only €6.50.. Better than anything French I've drunk from purchase in the UK.

My main problem in Font has always been preserving skin and tendons in good climbing weather.

I know, but that doesn't stop some locals doing stunts on quieter rock. There is more to cycling  than mountain bikes.

Thanks for the help guys, we've booked a ferry and will be keeping tabs on the weather, hopefully, it will be good if not, we are definitely gonna check out some of the local areas, maybe even a trip to Paris!

again thanks for the help