North Wales Gems: Part 3 - The Patroniser from Derw Fineron on Vimeo.

North Wales Gems: Part 4 - Manou from Derw Fineron on Vimeo.

Domen Škofic, Lead overall World Cup winner in 2016, will be competing in three Boulder World Cups in Asia starting this weekend in China. Four days ago, he did the first repeat of Jernej Kruder's In Time 9a in Sopata. He also did an 8c second go as well as tried Kruder's 9b+?, picture by Luka Tambaca. "It was just a small break to leave those plastic holds for a day or two." "In Time 9a is Jernej's ex project with a scary 8A dyno at the start followed by a bouldery 8c route. Jernej originally bolted the start two meters to the left but as it was to hard he decided to jump over it :) It's hard to find such complete route that makes boulderers and lead climbers happy at the same time. I will compete the whole world cup circuit, bouldering and lead. I just want to get better in bouldering, some finals would be great. I have a conditioning coach now. I started working with him one month ago but on the wall I still coach myself, no changes there."

Christof Rauch, who the last three years has done more than 300 boulders 8A and harder has had a new strike. During the last week, he has done twelve 8A to 8B+, half of them FAs. Just during the last seven months, the full time electrician has done ten 8B+. "Yesterday I checked out a possible extension into my new 8B+, see picture, which is about 8A on its own. It's a really cool and supertricky crack with a little feet first double toe hook section. Freaky! I think this thing will definitely get the 8C. There are a lot of other projects around 8A-8B+ in this area as well. Beside that I don't have any hard projects at the moment. But if the weather is fine I'll maybe go for a week to Switzerland at the beginning of May." When it comes to doing multiple hard boulders, the 22 year old Austrian is probably #1 in the world. Interestingly, he got his first free climbing shoes this year. In total, Christof has done 445 boulders 8A and harder. The 8a member who has done the most 8A and harder is Paul Robinson with more than 800 listed.

Thilo Schröter - Alakazam 8A FA from Thilo Schröter on Vimeo.

Adam Ondra has opened Arco's first 9b by doing the FA of Queen Line located in an ex-dry tooling crag with two more projects. "17 moves of super hard intense pinching, crimping and drop-knees, into an easier finish. Quite hard 9b for sure, but probably only the harder finish breaks into 9b+. 4 days of work this trip, a few goes three yrs ago. Stefano Ghisolfi is working a 9a+ and comments. (c) Matteo Pavana "At the half of the wall of Queen line there is a small rest and then right after an easy top out. If you go straight after the rest it adds an 8c and that is the King line." Directly afterwards, Adam moved to Masone where he repeated Ghisolfi's 100 moves 9a+ Ultimatum. "Icing on the cake after Queen Line." Read more on Ondra's Instagram with 100 000 followers. In total, Adam has now done 17 routes 9b or harder which can be compared with the runner up, Chris Sharma, who has done eight. Then there are three guys who have done two: Stefano Ghisolfi, Jakob Schubert and Alex Megos.