A brief glance at the present while still lingering in the past..

My ambitions to update the blog to the present before things started happening down here in Spain did (as you probably know by now) not really go as planed..

Basically since we got down here the house has been crowded with people and things have been happening left and right.
It started out with loads of wet holds in the cave and nothing going down the first week and a half.  Then it finally dried up in one windy night and Hannah, looking very strong, immediately sent her long time project, la Novena Puerta (8c+).

"Hannah getting close to the mid rest 8b+/8c on one of her attempts in the spring" ©Henning Wang

La Novena Puerta (The Ninth Gate) is the first part of La Novena Enmienda 9a/+ that Magnus did back in the day (the Magnus video can be found here:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRHSd4Q7Tq0

Hannah´s accent was the first female accent of the route, the hardest route climbed by a girl in the Santa Linya cave, basically one of the hardest climbs done by a girl in all of Spain.
I will not say the world, as I have no way to compare the routes here to the routes in for instance the Red River George, (or the much harder routes Jousune climbed in Switzerland back in the day) so I will leave it at Spain.

Previously two Austrian girls (Johanna and Angela) have climbed "8c+" in Santa Linya, but as the routes in question never actually was 8c+ I will say that Hannah is the first to do a proper one here.
To those climbing geeks out there that wonder wtf I´m talking about I will give a short explanation for my conclusions:
- Angela did Ingravids Eskerpes Extension before the hold broke (much easier crux section), basically about as hard as Rollito Sharma Extension is now (8c).
- Johanna did Open your Mind that has the strange guidebook grade of 8c/+. People log it at 8a.nu as 8c+ for the points, but the reality is that its about the same as Fabelita (8c) and much easier then Fabela (8c+), the benchmark routes going out from the same start...

But enough about the present, I am telling a story of the past :)

The Summer that was, Part 3!

Now in my story of the summer that was I had just retuned from Flatanger to Sogndal to take some pictures of Rockstar Adam Ondra crushing Lars Ole´s routes at Kvam. (se the summer that was, part 2)

It was then time for the great yearly boulder comp at the extreme sports week at Voss, and with a rainy weather forecast, we got Adam to tag along.
The money prices here are fairly good and Magnus usually turns up to take it home. With Adam now in the comp and a short notice for the route-setters, the stage was set for a great show.
As per usual I brought my camera along and shot some video when I did not climb myself.
A bit limited by time and other projects here I decided to just make a short quick clip from the finals:

https://vimeo.com/55346093

I also helped out filming Dag Hagen from the Norwegian climbing magazine (Norsk Klatring) do an interview with Adam about his tour of Norway. Fun to watch as we now know that he would go on to put up possibly the hardest route in the world in Flatanger!

https://vimeo.com/45354680

Voss has been one of the best Norwegian boulder comps for a long time, mainly because the most important criteria for a comp is usually met, that is, good climbers actually show up..
The route-setting is good and the atmosphere great even thought the comp has been plagued by rain the last few years.
How ever there is a couple of huge flaws that, even thought I love to compete there, will not see me compete again (at least not until the issues are dealt with...)

- Flaw one: The entry fee... This year it was up to staggering 425 kr (58 euros)! for about 1 hour of bouldering, that is one hour for the most of us that have no shot at the final and the money prices...

- Flaw two: The party fee... a one day pass to the festival is about 500+ kr, almost half the price of the entire week, making it way to expensive to go into the festival tent when you only come for the boulder comp (I did how ever manage to sneak in and not pay anything, but that is besides the point).
The summary I guess is that Voss is a great comp, but one that I can no longer afford to go to...