Chasin’ the Rubbish 2.0 in Fontainebleau, France

Fontainebleau, Easter 2013. Forget about searching for Easter eggs in the Fontainebleau forest: the Black Diamond team, Black Diamond athletes and numerous boulderers came together over the four days of the Easter 2013 holiday to rid the boulder areas of rubbish and to raise people’s awareness about adopting a respectful attitude toward nature and rock. 

Each year around 1.2 million climbers visit one of the largest and best known boulder areas in the world: ontainebleau in France. The main season coincides with the Easter holiday and climbers from throughout Europe make the pilgrimage to ‘Bleau to enjoy the good climbing conditions and the forest. Like last year, Black Diamond availed of this opportunity to make climbers and boulderers who use nature more aware of the ecological and environmental protection issues in the French boulder mecca. The motto “Respect the Forest” was also used to motivate the climbers to participate in a cleanup action.

The team around the BD athletes Nalle Huakkataival, Nico Favresse and Fred Nicole met every morning at the parking areas of the most popular areas in Fontainebleau (Isatis, Cul de Chien, and Valle de la Mee). Talks and flipcharts were used to draw the attention of visitors and climbers to a responsible behaviour, such as: clean climbing shoes thoroughly (sandy climbing shoes polish the rock), use magnesium sparingly and leave no tick marks, stay on the designated trails (risk of erosion), leave behind no rubbish (in particular no toilet paper), light no fires.

The boulderers then set off with compostable plastic sacks and collected rubbish. After the boulder and clean-up session the bags of rubbish were disposed of in the Black Diamond bus and all the participants received a small surprise. The clean-up day ended in a relaxed mood with live music from Nico Favresse, fresh beer and animated exchanges of information about the most recent boulder routes. On Easter Monday, the Black Diamond group itself went out and cleaned up the popular “Elephant” climbing area of rubbish. 

Over the four days, a total of more than 250 kg of rubbish was collected. This rubbish was then handed over to the regional forestry office to be disposed of. The local forestry officers were full of praise for the clean-up operation and thanked all the participating climbers on behalf of the forest.

Black Diamond also warmly thanked all the hard-working boulderers! Through this cleanup operation Black Diamond wants to ensure that it will still be possible to visit this unique climbing area in the future as well.