First he was assisted by his brother for two months drilling and hammering in 250 bolts. On the second trip, which lasted five months, his father was mainly his partner. Waking up at 06.00 for breakfast then walking 1.5 hour before starting climbing or jumaring to the roof.

"It was the hardest process of my life to be totally focus on this project for 2 + 5 months. I feel really happy to finish this crazy project. I did not know if it was possible to climb free. I was worried about to find some impossible points for climbing.

Every two weeks I had to go to Guiyang to train indoors to keep my power. It was also hard to not talk to people for a long time because the Chines in general do not talk English."

Edu has previously done three 9a+ and Chilam Balam 9a+/b. With 14 pitches including one 9a+ and two 8c+', Valhalla is a contender for being the hardest graded multi-pitch in the world. The FA took nine hours. Some days ago, he fell on pitch 12 after a foot hold broke. More info and pictures on his Insta (c) David Lopez Campe

Edu Marin, who in 2006 won the World Cup in Chamonix, has done the FA of Valhalla 9a+ in Getu which has 14 pitches and overhangs by 304 meter. More info to come.

Visa det här inlägget på Instagram

Ett inlägg delat av Edu Marín (@edumarin1) 20 Mar 2019 kl. 9:10 PDT

Taylor McNeill has done his third 8C, Squoze in Red Rocks. Video on his Insta

"Couldn’t do any of the 3 hard moves for my first two days on it. Had a breakthrough on day 3, but still had some figures to do. Day 4 I sorted it out and somehow got it done Hardest I’ve ever climbed in shorts. Dope one from Jwebb. Hard to say on the grade. It’s the fastest I’ve ever done a boulder this hard but I’m also feeling really fit."

Anna Stöhr, possibly the best ever female competition boulderer, could not participate in the WCH last year due to a back injury. Last month she reported on Insta that she for the first time did not think of her back and did her hardest route Riflessi 8c. Yesterday, the bouldering queen did one more long endurance, Cinque Uve in Arco. (c) Michele Bort

Anna has won both the World and the European Championship twice. Four years she has won the Boulder World Cup overall and in total the Austrian has won 22 WCs. In 2010, she became the second women to do an 8B, Riverbed.

Matt Fultz has had a great day in RMNP, having done two 8B+' in a day. In total the 27 year old has done 21 boulders 8B+ and as can be seen on his scorecard, he has been on a ten year almost steady progress. More info on his Insta.

How have you been able to raise your level in 2019?
The US Bouldering competition ended a couple months ago, so I have been 100% climbing outside or training on the hangboard/Tensionboard/ Moonboard. Just improving finger strength and power, and not worrying about long days in the gym doing comp-style problems. But most importantly, I’ve been psyched!

Jonathan Siegrist has done the second repeat of Joe Kinder's Life Of Villains in Hurricave giving it a personal 9a grade. "It was a long and ferocious winter but through fiery stubbornness and many wet climbing days something cool finally."

In total, the 33 year old has done 40 routes 9a to 9b and he is #3 in the 8a ranking game. (c) Chris Weidner

Enrico Lovato jumps 8c+ and does his first 9a, Sid Lives in Arco. (c) Lorenzo Rossato

"Two weeks ago I was advised by a friend of mine to try a short bouldery 9a in Nago crag, near Arco. The route consist of a 8b Boulder into an another 7b Boulder without any rest. In the first session I figured it out all the moves and after the 2nd session I began to fall high. In the 6th session I won the mental battle against this intense route. The strange thing is that I’ve never done an 8c+ route, I usually dislike long and endurance routes, and considering I love bouldering, I found this route very similar to my climbing style, so I didn’t care about the grade. I think maximal force trainings, using moonboard and hangboard, helped me a lot to achieve the goal."

Gonzalo Larrocha has done his second 9a+, La Rambla in Siurana. More info to come. (c) Javi Pec

Ryohei Kameyama, who just recently did the first repeat of Charles Albert's No kpote only 9A (8C+) in Fontainebleau has done the equivalent by doing La Révolutionnaire 8C+. It only took him four sessions. (c) Ryosuke Hibino

"This boulder has small crimps and slopers, so I struggled to maintain my endurance. Next project I think is "Trip hop" (8C). I couldn't climb this boulder my last bleau trip."

How do you train?
I feel my training key is campus board training. I often do ladder training. ladder training is simple. climb up and down, but I perform it as fast as possible and long time. It train endurance and agility, finger strength.

Gabriele Gorobey reports on Facebook that he has had some amazing days in Osp/Misja Pec having done his two very first 9a'; Halupca 1979 and Sanjski par extension. The multi-discipline climber, is known for establishing everything from hard core boulders to big walls.

Chris Weidner has done his second 8c, Killer Z in Hurricave which is a horizontal extension to an 8b. He started climbing in 1988 and did his first 8c being 40 years old. They key is hard training. (c) Lindsey Tjian

"It's an endurance route that, for me, required as much mental stamina as physical. There are a number of decent rests, but at each one I found it challenging to maintain tension with only the muscles required to stay on and to relax everything else. I used to run marathons and when I lowered from the redpoint, which took about 25 minutes, I felt like I had just crossed the finish line.

My whole life I've valued outdoor climbing much much more than indoor climbing and training. I only climbed in the gym when it was impossible to climb outside. I've changed my way of thinking, and am now putting a lot of time and energy into training. Turns out it works :)

This winter I committed to strength training for a few months. I did a repeaters cycle on the fingerboard then max hangs once or twice a week. More importantly for the Hurricave, which is often horizontal climbing, I trained core and upper body strength. For the first time since I was in high school I lifted weights. I gained a few pounds of muscle (I hope it's muscle!) but my strength to weight ratio feels higher than ever."

Lasse von Freier has done his first 8B+, Off the Wagon in Valle bavona. " Finally my hard training this winter payed off! A few days ago I repeated the classic„Off the Wagon” (8B+) in my second session. Skipping the 8B grade felt kind of unexpected."

Visa det här inlägget på Instagram

Ett inlägg delat av Lasse von Freier (@lasse_von_freier) 14 Mar 2019 kl. 10:47 PDT

Nicolas Pelorson, who previoulsy has done eight 8B+', has done his second 8C Délir onririque assis in Rocher Saint German. (Nico’s first was The Big Island in Font this December.) FA Charles Albert did climb barefoot, Nico used one climbing shoe and it took him some 20 sessions. "It's not so many harder with two shoes I think. Video

Marco Zanone, who has done three 8c+' in 2019, has done his first 9a, Dave Graham's Coup de Grace in Ticino. (c) Matteo Pavana

"I started trying this route back in 2016, I was recovering from a bad injury to my middle finger and I was definitely not strong enough for even climbing all the single move, but I knew that I was investing well my time because maybe in the future I would have been able to climb it.

Then in Autumn 2017 I came back with my brother Andrea with a different mindset, the conditions were prime and even if I was attending a Film School in Milan with limited time for climbing, my shape was quite good.
My progressions on the route was steady and after few days I was able to climbed the route from the second bolt to the top, but adding the 8A boulder problem at the start was another story.

I was feeling very close, cause I fall few time at the end of the roof, but then the winter came and I had to give up. 2018 was a bummer, the route was always wet I've never been able to give a proper go from the bottom. This year the spring arrived earlier than ever and after climbing A Muerte in Spain last month I felt ready to come back there. On the second day of attempts I eventually found my self topping out this outstanding boulder of granite, marking my first 9a.

My brother Andrea climbed this route back in autumn 2017; I was there belaying him on the send go and since then I've never stopped dreaming to feel all the emotions he felt during that day."

Ema Seliškar has done her fourth 8b+ the last six months, Agresija II in Kotecnik. In the Age & Gender bonus ranking the 14 year old Slovenian is #13. Last year she was between #9 and 12 in all four European Cups she entered. (c) Lucija Tarkuš

"Last year I was really nervous on comps, so I couldn't show my best and because of that I decided that I was not ready to compete in the Worlds yet. I am really looking forward and training hard to participate in the Youth Worlds this year in Arco. Nowdays I train 5 times in a week for 3-4 hours a day."

8a first presented climbing ethics in 2003. We used a traffic light visualization in order to say that there is no absolute strict rules. However, when it comes to "world records" we think you should not move towards getting a "yellow card". Do you agree with the presented ethics?

"In sport climbing, compared to most other sports, there are few written rules or use of referees. Instead, the climbing community creates and circulates their own Practice & Ethics. Beginners are sometimes struggling to understand what is "normal" behavior and what's allowed and what's not. Over time, the general procedure has been modified and in different subcultures different ethics apply."

Giuliano Cameroni has done his first two 8C+ just the last month, Poison the Well in Brione and REM in Cresciano. (c) Jimmy Webb

"REM and Poison the Well have first been tried by Dave Graham more than 10 years ago. I have never seen chalk on the REM holds, so I guess it hasn’t been tried in the last 5 years.

I started trying REM in January and it took me eight sessions to complete it. The key was the mental aspect: during the last four sessions I kept falling off the last hard move without any improvement. After that I decided to take a two weeks break from the boulder. Meanwhile, I was able to climb Poison the Well, which gave me a lot of confidence and motivation to complete REM as well.

The night of the send I was positive and didn’t feel any pressure, which allowed me to execute perfectly. Definitely felt like I was climbing in a dream! Also, this whole boulder is hands down my favorite piece of rock and the one I learned the most from."

Giuliano arrived to the boulder 23.30 and then did some easy warming up before he sent it 01.00 during the night. Video is coming up in April on Mellow.

"I warm up at the boulder, but just the minimum needed by hanging on the perfect Dreamtime holds and grabbing the crimp at 70%. It’s all about that right hand razor, so you really want your skin to be perfect and your fingers to be warm and well rested.

You need really cold conditions to hold on the right hand razor. During the day it was too warm, but at 1 AM it was dry and perfect! On REM I liked to warm up super slow and be sure I was at 100 when I gave the good try. On these kind of boulders where it all comes down to the skin, I prefer not doing too many moves in order to preserve the skin, so I mostly hang on comfortable holds or grab small crimps at 50-70%.

Grade-wise, a new beta has been found, so the difficulty still needs to be confirmed. Nonetheless it’s still one of the best and hardest lines in Ticino."

Ryohei Kameyama has done the first repeat of Charles Albert No Kpote Only in Fontainbleau and what makes it totally amazing is that he just needed four sessions! He could not do the bar foot sequence by Charles so he found new beta.

In comparison, Ryohei could not do the first move on Burden of Dreams 9A, although he could within eight days link it to the top from the second move. (c) Ryosuke Hibino who has helped us out with with some further info.

Next is probably La Révolutionnaire 8C+ and then possibly The Big Island sit project. They will stay until 24/3 in Font. Ryohei's secret training is campus board five sessions a week.