Investing in the Stefan Glowacz Masterpiece, "Desert Gold" (5.13a) from Will Mayo on Vimeo.

James Webb has done three 8B+'s in ten days including the FA of Kings of contortion in Obed. "Another day and another classic hardline for the southeast! This one 'kings of Contortion' v14 has to be one of the funkiest roof lines I've done. Big up to @sendclimbing for hookin me up with the best knee pad on the market making this rig possible! So psyched to add another stunner FA to my homeland. @paulrobinson87 also hooked it up for the 2nd ascent shortly after. Not a bad day in the woods!" Meanwhile, the #3 in the ranking game has also done another five FAs graded 8A and harder. The picture from his Instagram, which is loaded with great pics.

Ramon Julian, the best combined rock and competition climber of the last ten years, has done the FA of Ficció digital 9a in Berga. "Good route bolted by Oriol Maraver." Last week he also opened one 8c+ and onsighted Corrida 8c in Osp/Misja Pec. In total, the 159 cm tall climber has done 45 routes 9a and harder. The only climber to exceed him is Adam Ondra who has sent 110 routes 9a and harder.

Tom Randall wrote an interesting article in the latest issue of Rock & Ice - World's Hardest Cracks. Out of the Top-10 listed, Tom has done the FA of four and Sonnie Trotter of two. The most interesting story in the article is this about Beth Rodden's Meltdown 8c+ put at a pedestal much higher than any other trad route in the world. It took Beth five months to do it but in reality she never gave it a grade. At the time, Beth was married to Tommy Caldwell and they both said it was harder than any trad climbs that they had done. Beth did previously the Optimist 8c. Old interview in Climbing and here is one from Crux Crush. "After a few hours of working the moves, both Pete (Whittaker) and I walked away having done only 10 percent and scratching our heads over how the crux was even possible". Taking into consideration that when the best trad climbers in the world, such as Sonnie Trotter and Nicolas Favresse, go sport climbing, they often perform two grades harder doing 9a's, Meltdown might be equivalent to a 9a or 9a+ sport route, and possibly the hardest female ascent ever? (c) Corey Rich

Based on official Google statistics, 8a has increased by some 6% in both the number of visitors and unique visitors in November compared to last year. Yesterday, we had over 10 500 unique visitors, which is the highest number since last spring. All the major banner sponsors will continue supporting 8a also in 2016 and Prana has also signed up, including 350 8a Prana T-shirts. The picture shows the planned new design that we are about to finalize. We are looking for more guys that can help us spell check the database and the news, etc. Just send an email to [email protected]