The Story of 2 Worlds 8C (B+) by Killian Chabrier

Killian Chabrier, who just did Dreamtime 8B+ (C) in two sessions has done a likewise quick ascent of another Cresciano classic, The Story Of 2 Worlds (8C) giving it also a personal 8B+ grade. Video on his Insta.

How was the process taking it down?
So on my third day of climbing, I wanted to try The Dagger because I feel exhausted from my two previous days of climbing. I started warming up in it and did all the moves very quickly, and in one hour I send it. The line feels for me like an 8A+, not 8B or 8B+. At the end of the session, I tried a bit of the sit start (The Story of 2 Worlds) but I was too tired to do all the moves. In my second session, I did really quickly the moves to get to the stand. And on a try where I just wanted to try the first two moves, I did the start and arrived on the stand, the end is much easier so falling wasn’t an option and I sent it!

For the beta, I did exactly the same as Alex Megos. I decided to not use my kneepad because it wasn’t changing a lot for the start, maybe a little bit easier but it’s not significant and it’s more pleasant to climb without a kneepad. I decided to put 8B+ for the line because the recent beta that had been discovered is much easier than the original one, and for me, it feels a little bit easier than Dreamtime so 8B+ is logical for me!

It should be mentioned that the name of Dave Graham's classical testpiece from 2005 derived from "The Story of 2 Grading Worlds" back then. Dave talked about the grade inflation and called this, "The new 8C standard”. Some actually thought this was a sandbag grade and that 8C+ would be more appropriate. Basically, his strong statement, which was backed up by 8a, stopped the current grade inflation.

In 2010 Dai Koyamada did the second ascent but as he was told he had started too high, the 165cm tall came back in 2012 and did it from a lying position adding Low to the name and calling it 8C+. Later is was found out that he had started in the right position and also that his lying start actually did not add any difficulty.

Noteworthy is that Sebastian Cotting repeated Koyamada’s The Story... Low in 2018, also with the new beta going more feet first and called it 8B+, using a knee pad, video.