Nathan Phillips, who the last year has sent his two first 8C’s, has completed Beautiful Mind (8C) in Peak District.

Can you tell us more about the ascent?
Really psyched to climb this one as it’s probably the hardest boulder I’ve finished. It climbs the start section of Trance Trance (8C) which I climbed back in June. This section is maybe hard 8A/V11 then 2 or 3 new moves of around 7C/V9 to link into all the hard climbing of Dandelion Mind 8B+/V14 which I climbed about 8 years ago.

It took me 14 sessions since climbing Trance to complete it. About twice as many as Trance took. I started off re-learning the moves on Dandelion Mind as it had been years since I’d climbed it, then as the sessions went on it was just about making bigger and bigger links until eventually getting it done before the end of the limestone season.

What is coming up next?
I’m heading back to Switzerland in November to try to finish a 6 year project.

Which project is it and how many sessions have you put in?
The sit project to Fake Pamplemousse (8A) in Brione. I honestly have no idea… in the hundreds.

How will you prepare for your next trip and how close have you come?
I have a replica to train on and I’m doing very specific conditioning exercises. I’ve climbed it in 2 overlapping halves but haven’t got into the stand. I’ve done the stand 100’s of times so I’m reasonably confident I’ll do it when I get into it. All the difficulty is getting to the stand. 2 hard hand moves and a hard foot move.

Alex Honnold, with seven 8c+' under his belt, has done Manphibian (9a) in Mt. Charleston, giving a personal 8c+ grade. This is the first 8c+ and beyond for the 39-year-old since 2021. "Psyched to get this done in between life stuff - too much work travel. Used kneebars in several places that surely make this much easier than 9a - I could even imagine hard 8c the way I did it. But it's still a great route and I really enjoy the upper part." (c) Rollin Grimmett, who sent Arrested Development (8c+) the same day, comments.

"We both sent first try of the day, first me and then him. Lovely day at the crag with surprisingly no crowds. I have been trying Arrested since I moved to Vegas in June, gave it about a month of effort before it got too hot. I trained a lot in July on the TB2, and was psyched to put it together as soon as it started cooling off. The middle crux for me is very friction dependent, so it was nice not to not slip off anymore".