"I can see it happening this year, hopefully." Adam Ondra comes with great progress news on Instagram.

There are now more than 4.3 million star rated climbs in the 8a data base which will guide you to the best crags in the world. You can also search the Ticklist by the highest onsight percentage or thumbs up percentage and you can search by specific grades. By checking the number of ascents you also get a good knowledge if the routes are worth trying. If you want to go into more detail, you can check if many females or youngsters have done it or read comments in order to find out if the routes are good for you. As the topo authors can not try all the routes in the data base, they have to trust the FAs, which they might be a friend of. Surely, these guys can also have the preference for a certain types of routes that might not reflect the 8a community opinion. A good example of this is the E.T. sector in Kalymnos, which is one of the highest star rated crags on the island at the same time it has not gotten good score in the 8a databas.

Margarita Martinez, a former ballet dancer who came to USA from Puerto Rico at 16 years old, started climbing at 34 years old. Having had many injuries, health problems and also working hard baking wedding cakes she stopped climbing having reached 7c+ due to Rheumatoid Arthritis (see picture) for four years until she was 49 years old. At 53, having done several 7c+' again she decided to start pushing harder. Margarita started to focus on pull-ups and also pushing hard on the Maxi-pull endurance hang board until she got a new serious shoulder injury. The doctor suggested a replacement which should have meant stopping climbing. With a magic therapy she recovered again and having done four 8a+'s, she did Whole Shot 8b in Maple Canyon last year which originally was 8b+. (c) Edwin Teran Now she has made great progress on two 8b+ projects but once again she has gotten a serious health problem due to a spinal fracture. "Getting old sucks but you make lemonade with all the lemons of life." Climbing less for the moment she is focusing more on her new business, Drypointe, which is a small ball that will dry out the smell and bacteria from your shoes. How is it possible that your amazing story has not been picked up by the climbing media? Not sure, I guess I don't advertise myself. Some people like to kiss and tell but not me I climb because I love it. The grade or notoriety is not important to me. I don't want to be defined by climbing. I want to be defined by a good person to others, a good mother/wife and a good human.Trainingbeta has done a podcast interview with me.

Alex Megos, who did the first ever 9a onsight four years ago, reports on Facebook that he has done it again and this time in Gravere. The name of route is TCT which was put up by Stefano Ghisolfi, who commented, "I want to dedicate this route to Tito Claudio Traversa (that's why I called TCT), because I want everybody will remember him forever." TCT is chipped link-up of an 8c and an 8b+ but it was not Stefano who chipped it. Adam Ondra has also onsighted it before and is one ahead of Megos with three 9a onsights. Amazing is however that Megos has onsighted 100 % of the 9a's he has tried to onsight. Wow! How was it? How many 9a's have you tried to onsight but failed? It was great! Kinda funny because I didn't expect it at all. I felt really bad warming up, got pumped very fast on the warmup routes and felt my finger a little bit which is normally a sign that I climbed a little bit too much too soon. So first I thought I will not try it at all but then got talked into it and decided to just give it a go. It was anyway a totally unplanned thing that we ended up at Gravere. We were planning on going somewhere else but then the evening before Stefano's car didn't work anymore so we had to find someone to go climbing. Marcello Bombardi said he was going to Gravere so we went with him. At the crag they told me that there is a 9a here that Adam onsighted a couple of years back so they were really excited and told me I should try it. Despite feeling not very good I thought I might as well just give it a go. And then it worked out! I'm not totally sure but I think that was the first 9a I really tried to climb onsight. It never worked out for me that I had a proper chance to try it. In the Frankenjura I've done already everything and it's super hard to onsight routes, and then all the other times I climbed a 9a either there were no quickdraws in or no chalk or I just bailed. So I ended up never really preparing and trying."

Alex Megos, aki az első 9a pn-sightot mászta pár éve most ismét aprított, írta a Facebookján, ezúttal a TCT nevű utat mászta meg, melyet Stefano Ghisolfi nyitott pár éve. Az út neve emléket állít Tito Claudio Traversának, egy fiatal tehetséges olasz fiúnak, aki pár éve sportmászás közbeni balesetben hunyt el. (A köztes karabínere nem a hevederbe volt akasztva hanem a ficánkolást megakadályozó gumifülbe.) Régi olasz design szerint vésett út, egy 8c és egy 8b+ összemászásából áll. Adam Ondra is on-sightolta pár éve a TCT-t, és Megos előtt van 3 9a OS-el.

Alex Puccio has done her 46th 8A+, Position of power in RMNP. "Fun power endurance boulder. Got a bit pumped at the end." In total, the vice-world champion from 2014 has done 142 boulders 8A to 8B+ and she is #3 in the All time high ranking where Ashima Shiraishi is #1.