Three 8B+’s by Luke Eberhard

19-year-old Luke Eberhard has done his first three 8B+' and all of them in Rocklands: Speed of Sound (8B+), Black Eagle Assis (8B+) and Book Club (8B+). (c) Colin Gale

"I've been lucky to be able to spend a lot of time climbing outside this year and surprised myself by getting up some lines that have really inspired me. Speed of Sound was particularly special because it's an incredible line and I squeaked out a send on the evening of my last day in Rocklands after some heartbreakingly close attempts in previous sessions."

How long have you been climbing?
I started climbing roughly 10 years ago, and initially focused mainly on sport and trad. After lockdown, I started bouldering more and realised just how much incredible bouldering there is in the Western Cape. Recently I've also spent a lot of time developing some more remote but high-quality areas in the Cederberg.

Can you tell us more about these new Cederberg areas?
It turns out that the best boulders around here are at the tops of the mountains, so if you're willing to do big walk-ins, you can find endless bullet sandstone with reasonable conditions all year round and plenty of exhilarating highballs. We have a small community of psyched boulderers who really enjoy exploring and developing new lines in the middle of nowhere. We generally look on Google Earth for spots that look promising, and then just go see for ourselves. The walks are generally 2-4 hours uphill. Being able to climb in such beautiful wild places makes the walk-ins worth it.