Štěpán Volf has done his first 9a, Estado Critico in Siurana. The route is famous for Alex Megos onsight back in 2013. The picture is from a no-hands rest after having climbed the first 7c section. He stayed there for a minute and interestingly he had to take the knee pad off higher up in order to have the full flexibility bending his knee sitting while doing a move.

"Estado was a big challenge for me. For the past 3 years, I've been almost exclusively been bouldering, or done short bouldery routes, because the feeling of trying something for more time than three days was driving me crazy. I was really impatient. This year I've decided to change that and I wanted to choose the most challenging route for me (endurance based).

After five days of trying I knew that every attempt could be the ONE, but then the weather changed a lot. Strong freezing wind was making not the best conditions for climbing. So I've spent about two weeks of falling basically in the same move over and over again because my fingers were freezing really fast in these conditions, which started to effect my mindset. Fortunately, I've put myself together and climbed the route on the second day after the conditions improved. I was so happy so I even cried a bit. Funny thing is, that after my ascent it actually started to snow!"

Natalia Grossman has done Burnt 8A+ and Wet Dream 8A+ during a one week trip to Red Rock. More pics on her Insta. In the 8a Top-50 ascents ranking game, the 19-year-old is #3.

For the last five years, Natalia has been training and hanging out together with Brooke Raboutou. Mellow just published their summer video "For the first eight months of the year like four times a week but then once school started we didn’t train together because we were living in different states. Brooke has been the best climbing partner I could ever ask for. She always believes in me and motivates me to be the best climber I can be!"

Nicolas Collin, who was #2 in Lead in Moscow last months, has done The Big Island 8C in Fontainebleau. In total, it took him nine sessions but that was also because of bad weather and conditions during his Christmas holiday. (c) Nicolas Vancayzeele

"The weather was not so good so it was hard to climb on the boulder but we took those sessions with bad weather as a training. Every session I was doing better on the boulder so there were any real downs in the process😅 I knew that it was my last day in Fontainebleau today so I had a little pressure to send it😀"

Amazingly, his previous boulder best was 8A so the Belgian must have set some new kind of record jumping four grades.

"I didn't climb so much outdoor before as I was much more in the competition and studies. Now I take little more time to climb outdoor but it's still not so much The only boulder I climb during this trip was the Big Island. It was a big project."