Livello Zero has published an interview with the film maker Bernardo Gimenez. "We choose to keep the movie in a documentary format, without the over-polished look which a lot of climbing films generally try to achieve.

Here you have Adam Ondra's solid wide grade pyramid. This focus to also do relatively easier routes/boulders might be the key to become a lifestyle climber and to have a long time successful climbing arrier. A wide pyramid and enjoying every climbing challenge is probably most important especially for the youngsters as it sets the ground for your climbing lifestyle. As a matter of a fact, many of the best climbers in the history, beside Ondra, have also a wide pyramid instead of just focusing on increasing in grades. The coach of Alex Megos have said that they had an holistic approach and they actually tried to hold him back. Still, Megos has the same focus to either do the routes relatively fast or try another. Other top climbers with a wide grade pyramid is Chris Sharma, Dani Andrada, James Webb, Stefano Ghisolfi, Dai Koyamada, Ramon Julian Puigblanque, Fred Nicole, David Graham and Daniel Woods. At the same time, it is often the guys with the wide pyramid that also have done the most impressive onsights and flashes. On the other hand, there actually exist several top climbers with a pointy pyramid that later have almost stopped climbing. So maybe the best training advice for long term progress and enjoyment, for some, might simply be to just climb as much as possible increasing the foundation of the pyramid.

Based on the star rating of almost 5 million ascents, here are the popular Crags/Areas with the highest quality rating. Just scroll and "mouse over" the list and you can also easily find the best or worst for every country. Interesting to see is that the Boulder and Route list are dominated by USA and Europe respectively. Phalz is mentioned in both list! (c) Markus Köhler Boulder 1.8 Yosemite 8 841 ascents, Brione - 2 921 1.7 Poudre Canyon - 3 498 1.6 RMNP - 12 636 1.5 Joe's Valley - 22 935, Phalz - 5 574, Conceição - 3 967 1.4 HP 40, Targassonne, Annot, Moe's Valley, Sintra Routes 1.6 Phalz - 7 997, Montanejos - 5 686 1.5 Finale - 20 635, Terradetts - 8 155, American Fork - 6 751, Verdon 1.4 Céüse - 34 732, New River Gorge, St Légere, Rifle, Maple Canyon, Zillertal, Ten Sleep, Basler Jura

Here is a diagram showing which countries 8a members come from. USA sticks out with 12 644 (18.9 %) users followed by Spain with 7 418 (11.2 %) members and Germany, Italy, Sweden, Polen, UK and Canada. In general, both the number of users and visitors are rather evenly spread out around the climbing countries on the globe.

Yuji Hirayama reports on Instagram that he is getting closer on his big project La Rambla 9a+ in Siurana. The 49 year ols has been one of the best climbers in many disciplines since he did Les Specialistes 8b+ in Verdon in 1986. Climbing seems to be the only physical sport where an athlete can stay on top for 30 straight years!

Martin Stráník reports on Instagram that he has done Der mit dem Fels Tanzt 8C in Chironico n just two days. (c) Kateřina Stráník Martin won the silver in the Boulder World Championship in 2007 and has been competing actively since. In 2015 and 2016, he was runner up in two World Cups. In total the Czech has previously done 27 boulders 8B+ and three 8C's and he is #3 in the 8a ranking game.

Chris Ring has done some analysis based on the 8a.nu database to see if height and age have any impact on the reached peak climbing grade in routes and bouldering for U.S. climbers. R & I has found Ring's analysis interesting and published a long article. Looking at the diagram we can see that for 80 percent of U.S. route climbers, their peak performance varied within the 5.12b/c range, for boulderers it was V8 level. Taking into account the overall curve, in bouldering, the very shortest and tallest climbers generally reach a lower grade. Among the route climbers, a short body height might be an advantage, as shorter climbers reached higher grades on average. However, the differences can be considered rather small – all average peak grades range among the 5.12 and V7/8 level. Ring concludes that to him, "our subjective climbing grading scale is pretty good. […] It would be unfortunate if a super long reach was a prerequisite for climbing most 5.12s. And it turns out that it isn’t." As a side note, from the very best on rock it is interesting to see that when it comes to grades, a 155 cm female and a 185 cm male (Eiter and Ondra) have achieved the highest grade. In bouldering and in competitions, it is the same, it is impossible to say what is best as many of the top climbers are just around 160 cm or above 180 cm.

By looking at the 8a data base, we can see that it is often the climbs that are most repeated that sooner or later get down graded or are subject of. The dilemma for the media is that sometimes it is quite obvious that a route, often making headlines, should be reported with a lower more honest grade. In practice it is often like in the Emperor's new clothes. It just takes one guy shouting out a personal grade for a popular climb. The best example from the 8a data base is Gabri Moroni's comment for Mind Control in Oliana. "Everybody knows it's only 8c...but nobody will ever downgrade it :-P" In other words, it is actually seldom consensus that confirm or change the grade, because few climbers like to give personal grades. You can also use the success rate including the time and effort used as an indicator for how hard a climb is.

The Norway Climbing Federation has published a Crag Check which in order to increase safety outdoors. It can be printed out and placed on crags. Here is the 8a safety first article.