Seb Bouin makes third ascent of Move Hard (F9b)
- Wednesday 26th July 2023
Seb Bouin has made the 3rd ascent of Move Hard (F9b) in Hanshallaren Cave at Flatanger, Norway.
Seb has long been linked to the famous cave at Flatanger having been a regular visitor for over a decade. Last year was a remarkable year for Bouin. Having added DNA (F9c) at Ramirole, France he then made the first ascent of Nordic Marathon F9b/+ at Hanshallaren during the summer before heading over to the USA to make a rare repeat of Jumbo Love (F9b) before adding Supreme Jumbo Love (F9b+).
Once again, Bouin has returned to Norway; however, unlike Stefano Ghisolfi who is trying Silence, Seb spent some time on Project Big, the monster project which Adam Ondra and Jakob Schubert spent some time working it in autumn 2022.
Seb explained how his visit unfolded. “We arrived in Norway a week and a half ago and my main goal was to try Project Big. The videos of Jakob and Adam from last year motivated me a lot to visit this route. I spent 6 days on Project Big and managed to make some interesting progress on it, but I need more time for sure. Over the last week, the conditions began to worsen, so I decided to shift my focus and try another route from Adam, Move Hard.”
Move Hard is a hard linkup which Adam Ondra first climbed as a “warm-up” link when working towards the first ascent of Silence. Move Hard connects the start of Move (F9b/+) into the 2nd crux of Silence up which it then finishes. Despite the obvious difficulty, Seb quickly repeated Move Hard. Seb summarised the route saying, “It's a really good route combining multiple interesting cruxes. And it's a logical step to gain some confidence in Crux 2 and 3 of Silence.” Previously Move Hard had its second ascent in 2022 from Stefano Ghisolfi.
Interestingly, Seb has established his own sequence for the second crux of Silence which he describes, “My beta for Silence crux 2 is a little different from Adam and Stefano. I am taking the first crimp with my left hand after the rest. And reach for a right-hand sloper on the right. I then use a really bad knee bar to reach the normal right gaston, and then bring up my feet. I don't think this is a game-changing beta for this route. It's quite different but still hard.”
Going forward we’ll bring more news if/when there’s something to share. However, with Adam Ondra, Jakob Schubert and Stefano Ghisolfi all signed up for the forthcoming World Championships, Seb will have the run of Hanshallaren for now.