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Fanatic climbing reports that Genesis, a very sandbagged 8b in La Balme, with just three ascents in ten years, has been chipped this summer, which added six newly drilled holds. It was Mathieu Bouyoud who found that it was chipped and then he forwarded his critical thoughts. Some 25 years ago, it was quite popular to chip routes in France. A good example are most of the hard core routes in Gorges du Loup, which have drilled holds. 8a has been active trying to stop chipping and you can even mark chipped routes in the scorecard. Hopefully, FAs do not want to be on that list and actually Adam Ondra has been active reporting chipped routes. Another way of stopping chipping could be for topo authors to mark them them as chipped, just next to the FA name. 8a also try to avoid reporting chipped ascents. It should be emphasised that chipping an old and climbable route is probably as low as you can reach in the terms of climbing ethics.

Fanatic Climbing reports that Seb Bouin has done the FA of L'homme demain 9a/+ in Verdon, meaning that he has done 27 routes graded 9a to 9b. "The route was bolted by Antonin Rhodes. It's the hardest route of the crag, which now hosts four 9th-grade challenges. The route is 50 meters long, a stamina monster that Seb describes as an 8c+ followed by an 8c in the steepest part of the wall." Photo : Jan Novak Photography

The video starts with the amazing Speed final where 166 cm Marcin Dzienski beats 190 cm tall Danyil Boldyrev with 5 split seconds. Check those feet!

Illya Bakhmet-Smolenskyi arrived to Podzamcze some two weeks ago with a personal best of 8b. There he first did an 8b+ and yesterday he stepped up by doing Pijane trójkąty 8c. - I found a best place for me to climb. Almost every crag, rock and route are mostly vertical, with small holds and balancy moves, that's my favorite style of climbing. But even when the rock is like my style it is still very hard to send this line. It is long, pumpy and has three cruxes all over the line, so I did maximum two tries a day. At first two days I did only one try though. His mother, Ann, explains that Illya started climbing some four years ago but he has never had any trainers beside his parents, who climb in the 6th grade. Most of the times, Illya climbs outdoor as his parents normally work with IT and travel abroad. In 2014, he won Arco Rock Junior being 9 years old, when he also did his first 8a+.