Vladyslav Shevchenko and Fedor Samoilov (16) have been on a good trip to Misja Pec where both have done Strelovod 8c and also 8b+'s. Last year Vladyslav, see picture, did his first 8c+ in Nikita located by the sea in Crimea in Ukraine.

Fabian Buhl, who the last two years have done 12 boulders 8B+ and harder, has made the 4th ascent of Beat Kammerlander's Prinzip Hoffnung 8b+ at Bürser Platte. (c) Stefan Schlumpf "After my second ankle fracture within 6 months, I was walking again, but jumping down was forbidden to me for another 3 weeks. So I searched for some alternative experience where I didn't have to jump down, therefore I started trying the trad climb from Beat Kammerlander Prinzip Hoffnung 8b+ E9-10. Due to the reason that I hadn't climbed on a rope since two years or so, I was quite astonished when I could climb it on toprope on my second day. From this point on I wanted to try it on lead, but I had never climbed with gear, so I didn't know how my mental strength was. But luckily I fell only once in my first try, after this I had more trust in the micro protection and could climb more relaxed, for me this was the key to the redpoint. I was really happy, that I could climb my first 8b+ route, for me it is even nicer that it is also a trad climb and that it has such a great history. I want to thank Jacopo Larcher and Chri Bindhammer for the support and a special thanks go out to Beat for this amazing climb! Really amazing and technical tard climb by Beat Kammerlander, thanks for the vision! Thanks to Jacopo and Chri for the support. Maybe some more rope climbing in the future ;-)

GIANTS Bishop (CA) from niky_ceria on Vimeo.

Grades are important for selecting your challenges and to measure real progress. At the same time, many climbers want to stay away from personal gradings as it sometimes create polemics. Time Comparison Grading (TCG) can be used as a grade reference for both the guys who want to share or stay away from personal grades. If the prerequisites are the same when it comes to; Beta, Style, Condition and Form, one could speculate that there are one grade step in between; Onsight, Flash, 1, 4 or 30 sessions invested, see the TCG diagram. There are of course many exceptions and some climbers have a more steep or flat performance curve, also depending on type of rock. Once you have done a personal best you should be able to enjoy personal best' in all other Time/Effort categories. TCG is the base 8a have used when we have speculated on both down - and upgradings over the years and it might be the best way to explain how gradings work in practice. Please feel free to share your opinion.

Yosemite HD II from Project Yosemite on Vimeo.