So today, since it was the first time in the past few weeks that it hasn't rained, I took the opportunity and went climbing in Freyr, a local crag here in Belgium. The weather was nice but very cold and windy, so climbing turned out to be a bit epic. After bitching for a good 30 minutes about the cold, I warmed up and got on a route named Shingen, the classic 8b+ of the crag.
Shingen is a short, technical route on a slightly overhanging wall. It is basically two boulder problems in a row with no rest in between. The first part (~11 moves) is really sequential with some bad underclings and small crimps, maybe v8 boulder. After you climb this section there is one good pocket to clip and shake from, then another 10 or so moves to the finish jug. This upper part is a lot more powerful with bigger span moves on better holds, also around V8. The crux of the route is the very last hard move, a big deadpoint move off of a bad undercling into a crack.
At first, I had trouble doing the bottom boulder until I found a really nice dropknee that makes it a lot easier for me. After some work I was able to link it to the hard deadpoint move, but never quite got the crack good enough to hold on. Hopefully when the weather gets better, I can return and finish it up.
Here's a really bad video of Dave Graham doing the second ascent of this route. He makes it look quite easy, but don't forget, its Dave...
