Graceland 8B (+) flash by Will Bosi

William Bosi, who previously has flashed six 8B or 8B+, has made an amazing flash of Graceland (8B+) in Allgäu. ”First pull on rock in Germany so very surprised and happy to get the flash of this amazing bloc. Super cool shoulder move. Grades are impossible to know when you flash but I reckon it’s more on the 8B side than the +? Hopefully more people will go and try it soon :)” (c) Band of Birds

How did you prepare for the flash?
Was a fairly unprepared day as I was only free from 2pm and don’t know the area so we looking up what seemed like a cool and steep crag and headed to just have a look. As it had been snowing so much I didn’t think anything would be dry and we didn’t have pads. So I was very surprised to arrive at a really cool looking wall which was dry and had two stashed pads under it! I wasn’t really able to tell exactly where the lines went so I messaged Dominik Bösch who is local and luckily he was free and then popped over. He showed me the lines and his beta once he got there. So after going through the moves in my head a good few times I sat down and went for Graceland first! As it has a weird shoulder move I really wasn’t expecting to flash it, but somehow I was able to do the move well and just stay on.

How did you warm up and just how cold was it?
It was around -5 to 0 I believe and I warmed up by pretty much just doing arm swings and then feeling some of the holds around, my first pull of the floor was on Graceland.

What is next?
I’m back in the UK now but just training to hopefully return to Arco for Excalibur (9b+) in the coming weeks!