[00:00–00:10]
The coast in mid-Norway is just full of rock. It's an epic landscape with high-quality granite everywhere — from short boulder problems to massive sport climbs like Flatanger.

[00:10–00:20]
Mid-Norway is most famous among climbers for Flatanger. I mean, Flatanger is one of the world's best crags, at least for me.

[00:20–00:32]
But Vingsand is a bouldering area very close to Flatanger. It's considered Norway's best bouldering crag, and despite numerous trips to Flatanger for sport climbing, I had never bouldered in Vingsand.

[00:32–00:40]
I'm freaking out — I can't believe I finally get to check it out!

[00:40–00:52]
It's been raining a lot in the last few days, so I was searching for something that looked like a big roof — sheltered and hopefully dry.

[00:52–01:05]
There is this long boulder problem established by Ethan Pringle more than ten years ago. Because I'm rather in a sport-climbing mode, it looked like a good candidate — the boulder problem is more than 30 moves long.

[01:05–01:20]
When we arrived, it was disappointingly wet. But it looked so good that I decided to try it anyway.

[01:20–01:36]
On this boulder problem you find basically nothing but crimps — the most perfect crimps you can imagine. Well, they are not that perfect when they are pretty wet.

[01:36–01:50]
The first ten moves are quite intense: big lock-offs on incut crimps — sometimes not so incut — but it's mostly about static power and lock-offs.

[01:50–02:02]
Then there's an easier traverse to the left and then a crux in the middle. I don't know how hard that crux actually is when it's completely dry. Maybe the main crux is actually the lower part.

[02:02–02:18]
But in my mind the middle crux was what I expected to be the hardest because most of the crimps were pretty wet, and that part is a bit more slick, so it gets even harder when it's humid or wet.

[02:18–02:30]
I felt so good! It was so much fun climbing this boulder problem despite the wet holds. It felt very wet, but I still thought I could do it.

[02:30–02:44]
But as I was going for a better hold, this tiny hold just slipped off. I felt like I almost held on, but then I slipped.

[02:44–02:58]
It's been a while since I felt this sort of pain in my fingers. Since I was a little numb — it's also quite cold and very windy today — as I slipped that produced some painful numbness. It took several minutes to go away.

[02:58–03:12]
Trying to flash this boulder was a lot of fun, but I decided not to try again and save my power for another boulder problem — Wolverine.

[03:12–03:26]
Wolverine is an 8B+ established by my friend Martin Mobråten, a local climber from Trondheim. It was a long-standing project tried by many, and he finally did the first ascent.

[03:26–03:40]
I don't think it's had many repeats, and it's supposed to be quite tough for the grade.

[03:40–03:56]
Most boulders in Vingsand are drop-offs. They don't top out on the top of the boulder and are often in caves or cliff bends — which might not be best for pure boulderers.

[03:56–04:12]
But the first moment I saw this boulder problem I just thought, "Oh my god — this is so incredible!" The grips, the rock type, the moves you can find here are absolutely world-class.

[04:12–04:28]
Of course my idea was to try to flash, but when I saw it, it just looked really hard. Considering the steepness of the roof, the size of the holds, and the distance between them, you look at it and think, "It looks possible, but it looks so much harder than it actually is."

[04:28–04:44]
I mean, it's a hard boulder problem, but it looks even harder — and that's why I set off thinking, "Okay, I'll give it a try," but I didn't expect that I could do it.

[04:44–05:00]
After my first try I felt pretty confident that I could do it. But sometimes you feel so close on your first flash try, and if it depends a lot on your max power, it's easy not to do it that session because that level of max power drops really quickly.

[05:00–05:16]
So I focused on making my second try work: giving it my all and not making mistakes.

[05:16–05:24]
Yes! It turned out to be a great day, and for sure it's not my last time in this beautiful place!