Guntram Jörg has done his second 8C, Arzak in Murgtal which was put up by Fred Nicole. The Austrian was one of the leading boulders until 2015 when he got busy with setting up boulder gyms and finishing his study in economics. "Well - back to business of hard bouldering! First repeat after two holds broke off. Very physical boulder - the crux is linking all the moves. This line has everything: It´s hard, scary, long and good looking. Proud to climb something like this! Before I started with my climbing gym business my number one passion was establishing new boulders and repeating hard lines. In the last years my focus has changed and I have a lot of other things going on. I have responsibility for two companies and a lot of great employee. There are many goals to be reached, not just in bouldering outdoors."

The highest mountain/hill in Denmark is 171 meters. Now their climbing federation reports that they have started to build a 80 meter wall outside a CHP plant. The wall will be 9 meters wide including five bolt lines separated in four pitches. The most overhanging pitch will be four meters.

song yunchan, who started climbing 27 months ago and who won the Asia Youth Championship in Bouldering last year, has been on a 1.5 months trip to Railay which he finished by doing Avocado Power 8b+. "The Korean school will start a new semester in March. So I was able to go to Thailand by using the school winter vacation. For the first 2 weeks, I adapted my body to the local condition there. Then I tried to climb the target Avocado Power(8b+) while adjusting. There were many difficulties especially that it was a bit far between holds due to my short height (146 cm). I still feel happy thinking about it and am proud of myself. My goal in 2019 is to go back to Thailand and challenge 8c+ and to win in Asia K Climbing Championship - China 2019.

The first big competition in 2019 starts the next weekend, The CWIF. Here is a prediction of who will qualify to the Olympics without any knowledge from the 2019 season. It would make no sense to predict who will win the World Cups as very few of the top climbers will give this the highest priority. The Combined World Championship takes place outside Tokyo 11 - 22 July and the Top-7 will qualify to the Olympics. The country quota is two but for Japan it is just one as the second one will be selected by their federation. This means that it will probably be good enough to be Top-10 to get an Olympic ticket. In Innsbruck last year, Japan had four male and three female in the Top-8. Here is a prediction of who will qualify to Tokyo from the 2019 most important competition: 1. Tomoa Narasaki JPN - Janja Garnbret SLO 2. Adam Ondra CZE - Miho Nonaka JPN 3. Jakob Schubert AUT - Jessica Pilz AUT 4. (Kokoro Fujii JPN) - (Mei Kotake JPN) 5. Stefano Ghisolfi ITA - (Akiyo Noguchi JPN) 6. Jan Hojer GER - Ashima Shiraishi USA 7. (Meichi Narasaki JPN) - Sandra Lettner AUT 8. (Keita Dohi JPN) - Petra Klingler SUI 9. Mickel Mawem FRA - (Laura Stöckler AUT) 10. (Kai Harada JPN) - Stasa Gejo SRB 11. Jernej Kruder SLO

Gambaro Matteo, who won the Italian Lead Cup in 2005, has done his fourth 9a, Esclatamasters in Perles. Some years ago it was down graded to 8c+ but since a hold break, it is one again by most considered 9a. "Me and Elena (Chiappa) are on holidays for two weeks. I tried it for five days and did it in ten attempts in total. Today very warm so I climbed at 18.00. Incredible line." So how did you prepare for this trip? I climb hard and I bolt a lot at home in Val Pennavaire (Albenga). I opened the hardest lines and this winter I decided to train again as in my past competition years.

Joe Cardwell, who previously has done three 9a+', reports on Insta that he has done Joe Mama 9a+ in Oliana. (c) William What is next and what was the trick to arrive to Spain in such super shape? Next is a couple routes I’ve been trying at other crags. Also just enjoying climbing here in Catalonia with a fun crew. We’ve been visiting numerous areas instead of fixating on one spot which has been really refreshing. The majority of the training I did before was primarily bouldering and power endurance circuits, slightly different approach to what I’ve done in the past. It also didn’t hurt that I tried the route in Oliana quite a bit last spring in terrible conditions, it was almost constantly wet which made it hard to give it continuous effort. This season it’s warmer but everything is dry which made a huge difference!

"About 30 moves and if I had to put a grade on it I’d say it’s comparable to a 9a route. I know there is a travers rating system but no idea how it works. Anyone know what this could be?" Travers grading is in between the boulder and lead difficulty. A 9a route is more or less the same in difficulty as to do 8B+/C. In other words, Sharma's FA travers could be travers graded 8C/+. On the other hand, 8a has for many years said that it is just confusing to use travers grading as it is impossible to draw a line when a boulder qualifies to be travers graded. 8a use small letters when the difficulty is based on the route grading system and big letters for boulder graded climbs.

The Top-20 in the overall World Cup will qualify to a special event where the Top-6, including the country quota, will make it to Tokyo. (It is not clear if the ones who have already qualified to Tokyo will be allowed to participate and the same goes for the guys where the country quota has been full. It must be mentioned that it will not be fair if not everyone can take part as this will be the only competition with the Olympic format, prior to Tokyo.) 1. Mickael Mawem FRA - Sol Sa KOR 2. Sascha Lehmann SUI - Shauna Coxey GBR 3. Aleksei Rubtsov RUS - Clair Buhrfeind USA 4. Sam Avezou FRA - Anna Tsyganova RUS 5. Yannick Flohe GER - Vita Lukan SLO 6. Domen Skofic SLO - Jain Kim KOR

Philipp Gaßner, who did his first 8c+ when he was 14 years old, has done two 8c+ the last month in Margalef; Zipayorik ez!! and Bumaye. "Needed a bit to find the right beta for me then I sent it quite solid; fell once just before the anchor because of a dumb foot slip; for sure the best route in this length I‘ve done so far." The first time Philipp made 8a headlines was in 2011 when he 10 years old did his first 8a+. In the Combined ranking game the 18 year old is #6.

Caroline Sinno has done her third 8B transverse in Fontainebleau, Green Fingers which normally should more or less correspond to an 8A+ boulder. It is like eight meters where the cruxes are a down climb and the top out. It took her some 8-10 sessions during the winter, Video. (c) Lucien Martinez ”It’s very bouldery and there are two cruxes. First one gave me some problems, I had to be creative. I really enjoyed the process. I thought I would do it before winter but I got shut down by bad weather. As soon as it started to be good weather again it took me two sessions to finish it. Very happy :)” Caroline has now started to work on L’Insoutenable gauche, which was 8B when it was broken in 2009 and since then, most probably no repeat.