Matt Fultz, has beside one 8C+, done his eight 8C in 2020, Death Star in Eldora. The 29-year-old has had an almost continues progress for ten years but nevertheless, during the last two years, the late bloomer has stepped to a new level. Picture from his Insta, where he says, "Brilliant boulder from @dawoods89! Took me several sessions of work, but very happy to do it 2nd go today since my shoulder is usually sore for a week after I try it 😵."

Jacob Schubert has had a great trip to Arco with the Austrian National team. During five climbing days he did Beginning 9a (+), Omen Nomen 9a and Thunder Ribes 9a (8c+). The best male competition climber during the last ten years, also did six routes 8b+ to 8c+, including the onsight of 5 Uve, More info on his Insta. (c) Heiko Wilhelm

Palmer Larsen skips 8c+ and does his first 9a, Algorithm in The Fins. He projected it for some 15 days doing just some 30 tries as each try took some 45 minutes.

"Solving an algorithm is exactly what I felt like I was doing in order to send that route. It’s 40m long with a boulder crux at about half way and then two boulder cruxes right at the top. Each effort would be about 45 min so it took a lot each time I pulled on. I put about 15 days of work into the route and over 30 tries over the course of the past few months and sent it on probably the last day of the season before it gets too cold.

Perfect beta, temps, skin, mental toughness and desire, and just a bit of luck for it to all come together. Cheer to Johnathan for finding and getting the FA of the line. It felt impossible at first to me so I couldn’t imagine what he had to go through."

Climbing is unique when it comes to performances and age. There is no other sport where you can perform on a world-class level in between age 9 and 50. Probably we will not regularly see 9-year-old kids doing 9a but most likely several guys 55+ will do 9a within ten years. Among the ladies, Muriel Sarkany did Era Vella 9a (8c+) at 43 but within ten years, we just might have several 50+ female doing 8c+. Among the male, Chuck Odette having done an 8c (b+) being 64-year-old should have the "world record" of grade relative to age.

The reasons why climbing is unique in this sense are mainly that kids benefit from having smaller fingers and also that they can not get pumped as adults. Talking about the high performing old boys, they take advantage of climbing being a technical, tactical and mental sport. Anyone who wants to bet against Dani Andrada does a 9a in 2030?

Stefan Scarperi, who did his first 8C in March, has done the FA of Big Illusion 8c in Val Daone. "Amazing line, long progress 10 days over two years. For sure my hardest boulder so far!"

The Italian has done some 40 IFSC senior boulder comps since 2011. In 2015, he got the bronze in the European Championship and last year he was #16. "This year I will not compete. Now I'm focusing more on rock climbing. Next year, I do not know?"

Seb Bouin, who has done more than 50 routes 9a and harder, has done the FA of Beyond integral 9b/+. (c) Raphael Fourau

“This 50 meters route is made of two parts: a first 9a+ followed by an 8A+ boulder problem. The moves are amazing and spectacular, jumps, drop knees, hills, tufas, crimps,… all the ingredients for a perfect project. There is a good rest between both parts. About the grade, it’s hard to have a clear mind and to pronounce myself. I spent a lot of time to find the sequences. I think this route is on the same range than “Move” or “La rage d’Adam”. That’s why I propose 9b/+. Waiting for some climbers to try this piece." Source Fanatic Climbing.

Daniel Woods report on Insta that he also done it. "Best in the world shit! Holds, rock, and moves are out of this world. Power resistance climbing at its finest."

James Webb, #2 in the All-Time boulder ranking game, has done his first 9a+, Empath in Tahoe. Last week Carlo Traversi did the FA and it was actually "Jimmy" who found it, looking for boulders, and told Traversi about the incredible looking rock. "This marks the first of the grade for me and I’m super stoked to see the progression👌 Huge shout out to the homies for the motivation and of course to Carlo for having the vision and establishing one of the best pieces of stone I’ll ever climb." More comments on his Insta (c) Keenan Takahashi

"I’ve been sport climbing a good bit since the middle of summer. I spent a few weeks in Rifle which helped with the endurance a lot. I’m not sure how many days I spent on Empath. Maybe 10? 5 days in the summer sussing beta and maybe another 4 in the fall once it got cold. I’m pretty psyched on both routes and boulders at the moment. Gonna try some hard projects in California and maybe make my down towards Vegas for the winter months. There’s a bunch of hard routes around there I would love to check out."

Dani Moreno, who just sent his fifth 9a, El Intento in Cuenca (suggesting 8c+), did Hulk in Rodellar a couple of weeks ago. It was set up in 2006 by a french? guy as an 8c and the first route in the Ali Baba cave. Later it was downgraded to 8b+ but now Dani gave it a personal 8a+ grade, due to all kneebars. It should be mentioned that Reme Arenas called it 8b last week and already in 2018, Julen Alonso, commented, "8b/with the knee pads now, you go from not understanding anything to doing it in... 6 tries."

In regards to the 8c+ Hult extension total, Moreno thinks 8b+ is more appropriate. Noteworthy is that the shorter Hulk extension was put up as an 8c+ but is now considered 8c.

As have been mentioned before in this column, this is just the start of down gradings due to knee pads. Once the community improves technically and new sequences are found, possibly 20 % of all routes and boulders where you can use kneebars will probably get downgraded. These new grades should of course not reflect the performance of the pioneers who had to fight harder with bleeding knees.

Nathan Michel, who did his first out of six 8B+ in 2013, has done his first 8C, Longue promesse in Le Pertuis. (c) Self-Timer "With two flash, a self-timer, an intervalomètre that takes a photo every second, a good camera and above a little bit of luck 😉"

"The story of “Promesse” began in 2015 when I was seeking new rocks to climb (as I always am). After an afternoon spent roaming the forest I stumbled upon this piece of rock. I spent a few sessions with my friend Yann Leray trying to find a way on top of this boulder, but at the time I wasn’t strong enough to climb it. I shelved this project, but made the promise (“promesse”) to come back stronger to make the first ascent…

This summer, I decided to seriously get back into training and to tackle a few dream goals, the first of which was obviously “Promesse”. After six sessions together with Sacha Ribeyron and Antoine Girard, we finally figured out a beta that felt possible for the easier high start (8B+). Though, a lower start seemed possible, so I started working on it and quickly managed to link it to the start of “promesse”. The section adds a short 7C boulder and makes the rest of the climb considerably harder. After that, it took me three more session and perfect conditions to finally free the full line. "