Diego Cameroni, younger brother to Giuliano, has been three weeks in Rocklands where he managed to flash Hipster Whale (8B) and Moon shadow (8B). In total, the 22-year-old who had 8A as his flash personal best prior to Rocklands, flashed six boulders 8A and beyond.

Can you tell us more about your trip and how you were able to raise your flash game?
For the first Rocklands trip my idea was to try many different good boulder problems in the font 8 grade, not focusing on projecting something very hard that can take multiple sessions with the possibility of a failure.

After one week of our 3 weeks trip I got sick and could not climb hard for 5 days. However, it turned out that this had one positive aspect: after recovery my skin was really good! In the last part of our stay I was able to do the hardest ascents of the trip, many of them in my flash attempt.

The flash game has never been a central part of my climbing. The reason is that over the last years my climbing days were mostly based on discovering and projecting problems as well as developing new sectors: I like those things a lot.

Visiting a new place was of course something special and gave me the possibility to give a proper flash attempt to almost every boulder I wanted to try. This by collecting informations from the ground such as: video betas, touching holds, finding what I feel it is the right spot to grab holds and footholds. This way I felt able to try hard on the first attempt as if I already knew the boulder! Luckily many first attempts have been the good one.

Solveig Korherr, with 34 routes 8c to 9a under her belt, has completed One Piece (8c) in Frankenjura. (c) Stephan Vogt

Can you tell us more about the ascent?
I didn’t go to the Frankenjura with a specific goal, nor did I think I would try something hard in summer conditions. I mainly came here to have a good time with friends. This send came as a bit of a surprise to me.

Since I’ve been trying to take it a bit easier before coming here, dealing with some shoulder pain, I also wanted to relieve some of the pressure I sometimes put on myself. I couldn’t really tell in what shape I was at the moment. With the heat, I was already struggling on 7c+‘s, so that wasn’t a good indicator of my current shape either.

„One piece“ was recommended to me, and I thought I’d check it out, perhaps for a future trip. Actually, I didn’t feel very good the two days I checked it out, and a send felt far away. On the third day, we were lucky to have some cooler and drier conditions, which definitely was a game changer. After a promising second attempt and adjusting my beta, I could send it on the third try.