Friedrichshafen

The small rubber piece from SUM makes the screw carabiner stay in place, for free for all 8a T-shirt buyers

Fingers of Fred Nicole

More pics later...

The outdoor trade show in is a yearly event where all major actors take part including some 60 climbing companies and another 600 outdoor companies. You can easily do a marathon walking around all booths four days in a row. We registered up as media, saved some 100 euros, and during two days we had 65 meetings.

We were astonished by the feedback we did from the market and it feels good to say that we will never have to charge any member fee (it has never been the plan but many have asked us). Contrary, we will be able to speed up the development of features and give better services as we can start giving the webmaster some salary. Jonas has been working 15 h per week for almost four years without getting any money.

We invited all companies to take active part in the 8a community and contribute with news worthy information like; product innovations, pictures, news, and interviews with sponsored climbers. In the long run, the producers will have the opportunity to be members with their own password etc providing us with news under a separate column. Millet asked us to be our first company member ;) Major actors did get the 8a T-shirt and it was sure nice to see that when we left the party we actually did see our T-shirt out there.

Renald Quatrehomme from Beal, an 8a member since many years, told us that he had cut down the printing magazine budget with 50 % for order to give higher priority to the web. The following producers informed us that we are in their media plan for 2007;

5.10, Black Diamond, Faders, , Mammut, Millet, Nepa Bouldering, Petzl, Prana, Roc Pillar and The North Face.

Innovations & Trends

The simplest idea is often the best as it also can be dev. Mammut has some new Deep Water Solo shorts where you actually put the chalk into two ordinary pockets. The material gets dry in few minutes and you can challenge yourself over-and-over again without having a dussin chalkbags that never dry. I would guess that this simple idea will be copied immediately and we will see chalk bags without fluffy material that dries super quickly. Sharma will love it, having fell 100 times in his latest project.

Sometimes when you check your belay device you see that your screw carabiner has wandered 90 degrees. By putting on a small rubber piece from Faders on your carabiner it will always be in correct position. (Faders will send us 100 pieces that we will distribute to all 8a T-shirt buyers.)

Many new belay devices and Edelweiss has the most simple an cheap one doing the same thing as the GRIGRI.

Quickdraws get smaller and thinner, both the webbing and the carabiner. However, if you are a frighten climber like myself you actually prefer a thick webbing connected to a big carabiner when you catch the quickdraw to avoid that whipper.

The waist belt of the harness has a net which I guess is due to allow breathing, reducing the suet. However, we have found that once your t-shirt has been taken of, and you hang long time you might get some red bruises from the friction, the net creates.

Celebrities
David Graham is still injured. He has had four month without climbing and his hand problem actually don't seem to get better. He is getting super frustrated! Rosta Stefanek complained about the heat and told us that he for three weeks only has trained his little finger. Apparently he has a project in Frankenjura where he can not squeeze his monster fingers. We also meet Fred Nicole, gave him the 8a T-shirt, and set up plans for another interview and by shaking and looking at his hand we could understand that also his little fingers are to huge to squeeze into any normal size holds. The girlfriend of Evgeny Krivosheytsev said to us - Please don't brainwash him any more with this 8a talk. He is always surfing and planning how his next hard redpoint could get him higher in the ranking.

We changed strategy and gave her the 8a T-shirt instead!