The Norwegian climbers Thilo Schroeter sends with „Agnes Buen“ his first 9a. It is located in the Norwegian climbing crag Sørkedalen near Oslo. In the now 25-year-old project, Thilo spent this year, after some trying since August, which could climb route already five days in the year 2016.

Thilo  by instagram: Agnes Buen was bolted about 25 years ago and has become the most notorious project in Oslo since then. All the Norwegian strong men and a few international stars tried the route back in the 90s but got shut down. I think it was written off for many years until it was tried again by some friends of mine and I went out to try it myself. All the moves went within a session or two but they all felt really hard and linking them impossible. That season I had about five days on it, and ultimately I was able to make a link up to the crux, but there was just no way that the crux would go ground up anytime soon. The weather got bad and that was that. Two years passed without trying, but the route was still in the back of my mind. Fast forward to 2018, and after a long competition season I was very motivated to give myself the time to just maybe get it done this season. With no trips planed for a few months I started trying the route mid August in bad conditions to get it dialed for when the crisp conditions would arrive, as the window for good conditions in Norway is often very short. Minimum once a week I went out to try it. After about five sessions of working on it conditions arrived, and I had three solid sessions with exceptionally good friction. I was linking up to the crux most of my attempts but the low percentage crux move eluded me time and time again. The more I fell on the move the more I lost hope. As long as there is progress everything is cool, and generally I’m good at seeing progress in small details and not only in new high points, but eventually also the details were perfected and I was still falling over and over again on the same move. I even knew from the beginning that this stagnation probably would occur, and I thought I was prepared, but I wasn’t, it was getting to me mentally. A lot of rain came in and made it impossible to try the route, I went to check the route a few times just to find it soaked. I thought thats it. I almost wanted the weather to suck so that I didn’t have to keep failing. Continuation in the comment section!