Angie Scarth-Johnson has reclimbed Welcome to Tijuana 8c in Rodellar, which she already did last year. However, some locals did say that she had used some eliminated holds one meter to the left of the original line, disclaiming the ascent. Kind of a strange thing for a 10-year-old setting a new world standard, getting the info that it was prohibited to use some small shallow pockets where no other can get their fingers into. Anyhow, now Angie has done the straight up elimination 8c. Angie is from Australia and she is on a three-month-long road trip to Europe being home-schooled by her non-climbing parents. In March she did an 8c in Margalef.

Sasha Gerzha has done his second 9a, Estado Critico in Siurana. The picture is from La Rambla 9a+, which will be his next project. - I had a couple of tries in January but just for check the moves and went back to St Petersburg for training. Then I came again in March and was close to send after one week or 10 days but get a cut finger and it took around one another week to recover. I didn't climb for this period and than I start again with no power after the rest! And the weather started to be hot! So it was all the time something wrong

Said Belhaj has finished his longest project ever and done his first 9a+, Chris Sharma's Papichulo in Oliana. Full story on Said's website. (c) Walker Emerson - I don’t think I’ve ever had a route this dialed and rarely had to fight so hard. At the headwall, after the hardest sections, I knew that I could do it if I just didn’t hesitate. And if the 1st section is my anti style, up there I was in my element climbing a muerte. This is what I’ve done and trained for all my life: go fast, go 100%, let go of anxiety and totally tune in with the freedom of moving on rock. There is always a kind of magical feeling when you suddenly succeed with something you kept on failing on before. If I would to pick a route based on the grade (a phenomenon that I’ve noticed: people climbing grades, not routes), ”Papi” would probably be pretty low on the list. The whole first section is harder the shorter you are and I’m terrible on resistance on small holds. A steep route in a cave would’ve been more in line with ”what I’m good at”. But climbing has never been about that: we climb to challenge our selves, it has never been about making climbing easy. Climb routes that we find beautiful and some of them talk louder to us than others.

Climbing in South Tyrol // Traumpfeiler, Val Gardena // Filip Schenk & Stefan Stuflesser from Vertical Life on Vimeo.

Fontainebleau - A Bit of Beta from David Mason on Vimeo.

Last year we at the Spanish 8a.nu site had a long chat with Mikel Linacisoro in this vídeo interview just before he became the European Youth Champion. There he expressed that he wanted to send his first 9a before his 15th birthday. However, being focused on the comps at that moment he had to wait to have that goal completed until last Sunday when he was finally able to clip the chains of Begi Puntuan, 9a in Etxauri. He started trying it at the beginning of last December, projected it for two weekends before Christmas and he almost sent it during those holidays. Then, he just needed two more weekend trips to the crag to bag it. This way he's set a Spanish record again, being the youngest (he's 15 now) to send an 8c and an 8c+ back in those days and a 9a now. When we interviewed him for the first time three years ago he had redpointed an 8b+ and onsighted an 8a+. That same year and just before turning 13 he fired-off his first 8c with 'White Zombie' in Baltzola and one year after he reached the 8c+ grade with 'Koldoren Mundua' in Araotz. **Now you can read the interview we had with the Basque yesterday, where he tells us more about his new step up.