A bolt placed on a lip above a roof where you continue climbing diagonal might be a death trap as several sideway and inward falls might break the sling. If it does not break but did wear down significantly, against the rock, you might be carrying a death trap quick draw in your rack. A Swedish climber was lucky, some days ago, when his 18 months sling broke after 5-7 such sideway and inwards falls. All bolts where the sling is at risk for such breaking should be removed.

From the city center of Göteborg, with almost 1 million inhabitants, you can reach 2 000 climbs divided equally into boulders, trad and sport, within 30 minutes on a cycle. This makes Göteborg the most urban climbing medium city in the world. The amazing thing is that there just the latest few years more than 100 new sport routes have been developed, including a four pitch 6a and also the first beginner crag right in the epicenter of the famous trad area. Last year, Alex Megos did a a nicely located superb 8B+ which you can reach within nine minutes in the train and three minutes walk from the city center. "One of my greatest boulder FAs ever". (c) Daniela Ebler Equally amazing is that there are still great potential for at least 100 sport, trad and boulder FA's. Last August we moved to the center of the sport climbs and during the autumn I started projecting some 30 routes, with 500 meters from our house, out of one is a very nice five pitch 6a. In practice, I just rappelled down next to my first MP, which is also the only sport MP within 700 km, and started to climb, no brushing was necessary. All these projects will be finished within a fortnight after coming back from our big travel 1/6. Anybody interested to climb in Göteborg should also bear in mind that within one hour, there are another 500+ sport routes often located just near to the sea. One hour north does also "Bohuslän" starts which is a trad granite area in world class. In this area you can also find Granitogrotta, 17 meters overhang up to 8c+ FA Ondra, and Lysekil, beginner and kids friendly crags, with totally some 250 very well protected sport routes. Please post questions as a forum comment.

Being a National Youth Coach for many years I see and hear that the scene is changing a lot, especially for the youngest category. In the last European Youth Cup in Imst there were 100 youngsters 02- 03 competing and level for the top has gone up. Flash is nice but at the same time, the coaches and parents are running the beta and some of the not so strong kids were crying behind the scene, after an early fall. My focus as a coach was equally as much outdoors and we never did any structured or periodization training before the comps. I sometimes let almost "beginners" compete but just as a motivation boost. The message to the coaches and parents who bring some not so strong kids, just focus on the fun. Do not set up a structured training program and create beta robot climbers at the scene in order to optimize their performance. It is just not fair to the not so experienced kids who are competing against youngsters that possibly have trained 15+ hours for several years. Trying to optimize the performance for the "beginners" will just creates anxiety and possibly they will just stop competing.

Katrin Gründler (born Sedlmayer) has done her second 8c, Roof Warrior in Frankenjura and her story is quite interesting. (c) moritz perwitschky "I started climbing when I was 10 years old. In these years my focus was on alpine routes (“Fleichbank Ostwand, Wilder Kaiser” at the age of 13). Then I was fascinated by on sight climbing and competition-climbing (greatest success European Champion 2000 in Munich and Weltcup Winner in Lecco 2002). During the following years climbing got somewhat less important because I finished studying and had two children. Bit by bit climbing became again more and more important to me, and I was lucky to meet some strong young climbers who motivated me to try harder routes. So I was able to climb one 8c two years ago and now I scored again. To gain success I spent about 10 days on “Roof Warrior” (8c), Universum, Frankenjura. The climbing is very athletical and needs a lot of endurance. You are starting with a vertical wall, followed by an impressive roof. I really enjoyed this kind of climbing, because it´s my style." Due to clever and well adapted training and above all, great motivation I am still able, in spite of my age, to climb quite hard routes. Maybe I could have climbed harder routes at the age of twenty but unfortunately I never tried."

The first European Youth Cup in 2017 started out in Imst with 250 participants. The route setting team included Kilian Fischuber and many said it was the best route setting ever. Previous years, Austria and Slovenia have dominated but now the top positions were more evenly spread out. As previous years, out of the big countries UK and especially Germany have hard time getting their youth high up in the ranking. Several hundred more pictures from Kletterzentrum. The Norwegian head coach, Reino Horak, agrees that the route setting was excellent and also comments that it can be seen that the level of Youth B has gone up. Here are the winners and noteworthy is that Nika Potapova was the only one who topped out all three routes. All three boys and Nika are 8a members. 98: V Shevchenko RUS - H Doumont BEL 00: F Schenk ITA - N Arc FRA 02: A Gines ESP - N Potapova UKR Complete results

Rafa Fanega, who started climbing at 16 and did his first 8c+ being 39 years old, has done another two 8c+' the last week, El engaño and the FA of Maldita Envidia both in Villanueva del Rosario. The 163 cm tall and 42 years old has now done nine 8c+'. In total, Rafa has recorded 1 679 routes, out of which one third are FA's. Most of his FA's are from Fin del Mundo outside Madrid, which has been one of the most popular crags in Spain recently, although it is closed between January 15th to June 15th. The picture by Raul Santano is from Fin del Mundo. Interview by our spanish editor Talo Martin. Do you think this could be the season to climb your first 9a? To be honest I don't know. My life is bolt routes somewhere here and somewhere there. I climb as much as I bolt new routes, and in this way it is hard to be focus in something hard. The days I climb something hard is always without any expectations. I work 121 days a year and that gives me loads of free time, and with so much rock I don't rest too much. Have you any idea of how many routes do you bolted? I think that more than 1.000, but I guess I should count them. Since the day I live in Andalusia I don't know.. It's true that I could have bought a pretty nice camper van with the money I spent in the last decade. Always there are friends who help you with some bolts and hangers and I appreciate that. For me bolting is important as climbing.