Adam Ondra is the best climber in the world and he is also the top climber that uses most personal grades, helping the topo producers and the community to get unanimous grades. Alex Honnold just might be the runner up in the personal grade recording. During the last three weeks he has done 17 routes 7c+ to 8b+ (8c), including suggesting 7c+ for his onsight of Hellion in Ten Sleep which everyone says is 8a+. (c) Jimmy Chin In total, Alex has recorded 755 climbs on his scorecard and for more than hundred, personal grades or soft comments have been made. One reason for this could be that he is doing many trad routes and also use these routes as bench marks. In the trad ranking game, Honnold has been #1 for many years.

Andrea Cartas publishes in her blog the FA of Der Fan Tutte 8c/8c+, a link up from Der des Ders 7c+ to Cossi Fan Tutte second pitch. She was very close to climb the original route but the first pitch tufa was completly soaked. (C) Carlos Padilla "Now I will return to climb Cossi, because I did Fan Tutte. We'll call this new link up "Der Fan Tutte" and I propose something easier than the original, because I would like to be honest with myself and I want "Cossi" as my very first 8c+"

Edelrid's Loopo Lite at 85 grams is probably the lightest harness on the market. Actually, to get it out of the super small bad that fits into your hand and put it on feels like a joke. Before I was allowed to test it my wife told me that I had to send Edelrid a mail confirming that it besides ski-touring also is allowed to take falls on. After I got the, Sure, like any other harness it is certified according to the EN 12277, C. we tested it and surely it is not comfortable taking a full but it does the job. If I would have been a World Cup sponsored Edelrid climber I would surely gone for it getting some 250 grams advantage towards all my competitors.

Alex Megos comes with great news on Facebook with a great picture by Ken Etzel. "What a battle! Sometimes things just take a while but when they happen it's even more rewarding! After 5 us of worked it I did the first repeat of "The Finnish Line" put up by @nalle_hukkataival a few weeks ago! Maybe the best line of all time?!" In regards the grade, Hukkataival said it was a contender to be the hardest in Rocklands which has four 8C's.

With the epicenter some 60 km east of Kalymnos, a 6.7 magnitude quack stroke 00:30 friday night and from Kos reports two dead and hundreds injured. Many buildings on Kos, which was closer to the epicenter, were destroyed and also a tsunami hit the sourranding islands. Aris T, the topo producer, reports that they woke up during the night and the ground was shaking for about 30 seconds. He has not heard about any problems on the island and he is going out climbing on Secret Garden and will give us further updates. It might be wise to pay attention for loose rock.

Cameron Hörst (16) has climbed two 8b+ routes in a day at Wild Iris, Wyoming, including a rare ascent of Todd Skinner’s legendary “Throwin’ the Houlihan” (historically graded 8b+, but now considered 8c by local consensus). The younger Hörst brother, Jonathan (14), has climbed multiple 8b routes in Wyoming, most prominent being his first ascent of “Threat Level Midnight” at Ten Sleep Canyon. It’s worthy to note that the Hörst brothers only climb 7 months of the year, thus taking a break to play other sports. Their father, renowned coach and author Eric Hörst, endorses a diverse approach to youth sports and training…for optimal physical and mental development, and to reduce risk of overuse injury among adolescent climbers. Read his article, Youth training and growth plate injuries. Four years ago Jonathan did his first 8b+ at 10 years old and he has now done 24 routes 8b and 8b+. Cameron did his first 8b+ at 11 years old and he has now done 17 routes 8b+ and 8c.

Sorry for the downtime but now we have upgraded to a modern server with much higher capacity which means faster access to 8a. It might be that some things need to be optimized but as it stands now the response time is more than double as fast :)

It's now possible to add new ascents using the beta site! We've added a quick-add option so it's easy to add new ascents when you're at the crag. Previously you could get all news, data base access and also driving directions to several thousand crags in the world. The bugs have also been fixed. Read the full newsletter here Check out the beta site

Frankenjura, Arco and Finale are three crags where sport climbing was born and they are all Top-20 in the crag data base. Based on the trend rating, we can see that 11-12 % of the added ascents are from the last 12 months meaning that they have all increased in popularity in the last year. The crags that have lost in popularity are in general crags from France, Kalymnos and Railay Beach.

98: Yannick Flohe GER - Johanna Holfeld GER 00: Nathan Martin FRA - Urska Repusic SLO 02: Alberto Gines ESP - Luce Douady FRA Complete result Interesting that Germany, who has struggled with poor junior results for several years, got two golds and some more good results. Laura Rogara, who was in the Lead WC final, was just fourth among the 16 year old's. Nikita Potopova, who has been totally superior in Lead this year, was just seventh.