Yuji Hirayama, one of the true climbing legends, reports on Insta that he has done the FA of Peaceful Mountain 9a in Mt Futago. The line starts with an old 8a followed by an 8A+ boulder and a 7b+ top out. (c) Yui Takahashi / Allopsidae LLC

Since 1986, when Yuji did Le Specialist 8b+, the now 52-year-old has been on the cutting edge. In 1991, he won his first World Cup and in 1998, as well as in 2000, he won overall. After his competition career, he made the FA of Flat Mountain 9a/+ in 2003 and the next year he onsighted White Zombie 8c. A few years later he did Cobra Crack 8c trad and the FA of an MP in Borneo including one 9a pitch. In his resume, being one of the best multi-discipline climbers in history, he has also made boulders up to 8B+, DWS up to 8b+, several big walls including also several times have had the Speed record up on El Cap. Since 2010, he runs Climb Park Base Camp which over the years have organized several competitions. He has also been active in the Japanese Federation and helping out IFSC getting climbing into the Olympics. Just over a year ago, he made the FA of Hanabi 8c+ also in Mt Futago.

William Bosi has done three 8B's in one day out of which, one was a flash, 4X+1 (8B) in Bowderstone. (c) Elle Duffield

How did you prepare for the flash and what kind of beta did you have?
I had one video which was of the first ascent, so I knew the sequence but couldn’t really tell the feet. Therefore to prepare for the flash I spent about twenty minutes looking from start to end for feet and exactly where the holds are. I also knew I would be too small for the knee bar used by the first ascent, so I spent most of the time looking for other foot options for that move. Then I warmed up and sent Filp Opera 8B before getting on it.

What are your 2022 comp and outdoor plans?
I decided to take a break from competition this year to climb outside more, so I’ve been focused just on training over the last couple months. Hopefully heading out to mainland Europe soon!

Alex Ventajas has done Biologico (9a) in Narango. "Incredible moves in an incredible place. Six days of projecting." (c) Andrea Ferrari

"This route caught my attention since the first time I went to Narango. I saw a friend trying it and it seemed a really powerful and esthetic route. When I came back to this amazing sector a couple of months ago I decided to put my hands on it. I started by sending the 8c that shares the upper part with “Biologico” and then I started to try the 9a.

The route is quite short, with an easy start, followed by the boulder sequence that gives the grade of the route: some very small crimps in an overhanging wall and then a dynamic move, where great coordination is essential. After a rest there is a second boulder problem and finally some endurance climbing to reach the top.

I think it’s a very futuristic route, because the hardest part is very short, but very demanding and the first boulder sequence reminds me a boulder of the present-day competitions! Furthermore, it’s the first time I actually noticed, in a sport climbing route, that size can make a little difference: the method used by other climbers weren’t good for me, because I was too short to reach some crimps with the good foothold in the first boulder and I needed to use some very bad intermediate holds in the second one too.

Finally, I managed to find my own way to the top and I really enjoyed the process. After three days trying it I felt close, but for a few more days I kept missing the hold after the dynamic move. Last Saturday, the day when I was supposed to rest because my hands where skinned, I actually felt like it was going to be the right day to send it. At 4 p.m., after a day spent belaying, I had the strange feeling that I was warmed up. So I decided to give the route a try, and it was the perfect attempt! I send the route after 7 days of attempts (and few days more for freeing the 8c “Bibita Biologica”) "
The 22-year-old did his first 9a some nine months ago and in total, he has now done five and one 9a+. As a matter of a fact, during 2018 and 2019 his max grade was 8c. His climbing has taken a leap since he moved to Italy where his girlfriend lives.

"Unfortunately I didn’t have the possibility to try new hard routes (in Spain). That’s because I had already done almost every route in the climbing sectors I could reach from my home, I didn’t have a car and I didn’t have the possibility to travel. That wasn’t a good period for me, I couldn’t improve and I couldn’t try something motivating. Since I moved to Italy things have changed, I have thousands of new routes around and I have progressively regained shape and motivation."

What's commonly regarded as the first 8c+ trad climb in the world, Meltdown, was put up by Beth Rodden in 2008. It has only been repeated once, by Carlo Traversi in 2018, who confirmed the grade. The potential second 8c+ trad climb, Recovery Drink, was put up by Nico Favresse, in 2013, and has been repeated twice. Blackbeard's Tears, by Ethan Pringle, in 2016, is the potential third 8c+ trad climb, if we exclude a few others that are considered eliminants or otherwise contrived.

Tribe, by Jacopo Larcher in 2019, was not graded although he said it was his hardest ever climb, and he has done five 9a's and La Rambla, 9a+.

One of the eliminant/contrived contenders is Rhapsody, climbed by Dave MacLeod in 2006. It has been repeated four times and downgrades have been suggested. The first piece was pre-placed by Macleod, but the first repeater, Sonnie Trotter, said this placement and the other gear placements didn't alter the physical difficulty of this particular line. Two years later, MacLeod did the FA of Echo Wall saying it was harder than Rhapsody but he did not grade it. Rounding off the 8c+ contenders, Tom Randall has done Pura Pura and Bernd Zangerl Island in the Sun, but these lines are boulder problems that climb into gear protected finishes.

Beside these above mentioned 8c+ or harder trad climbs, there's another dozen 8c trad lines and roughly 30 8b+ trad routes that have been done clean, i.e. placing gear on lead. 99boulders.com has the most updated (2019) list of all the hardest trad climbs. It is worth noting that placing gear more often than not, adds to the difficulty and can also result in handholds and footholds being blocked. At the beginning of the sport climbing era, placing quickdraws on lead was also the norm, and an onsight could only be claimed if you had hung your own quickdraws.

Eva Hammelmüller has onsighted Freed by the devil (8b) in . Including three 8b onsights over the last 12 months, the 21-year-old is #2 in the female onsight ranking game. "The route is very technical and there was hardly any chalk on the holds, so I didn‘t expect to onsight it - I just started climbing and everything worked out perfectly!" (c) Richard Felderer - Vibram

The IFSC test competition for the new Combined Olympic format took place at Sharma Barcelona, with Alberto Gínes López and Iziar Martinez winning with 170.1 and 199.8 points respectively. The runner ups, Javier Cano and Monsech Gasca scored 101.1 and 113.6 points. Complete results (c) Jan Virt

The way it played out, Alberto and Javier had already secured the two first spots before they even climbed in the Lead portion, as they were superior in Bouldering and none of the other six finalists scored high in Lead. When it came time for Iziar to set off on the Lead route, she had already secured third place and there was little excitement as she only had to equal the score of the lowest result in the Lead final in order to secure the gold.

When it comes to the Top-20 qualification, the Top-6 females in Bouldering would have made it to the Top-8 final without participating in the Lead qualification. Furthermore, all but one result in the 11-20 Combined male rankings were decided by the results in Lead.

Alex Puccio reports on Insta with a video that she has done Hailstorm 8B (+) in Ogden and it was basically on her first session. In total, the 31-yar-old has now done almost 250 boulders 8A and harder which is most in the world among the females.

"We went up to the boulder the day before and I only tried the first few moves of the stand start “Firestorm” for a very short time because the entire top of the boulder was wet from the snow melting on the top. Maybe we climbed for like 30 min or so before the water came all the way down the boulder onto the lower holds. So we left.

We went back the next day and I was able to send the stand really quickly and then Michaela sent the sit. I didn’t have any intentions of really trying the sit but with some encouragement from them, I got on it, at least to see how some of the moves felt. I thought maybe I can come back to it. After a little work on it, and all of Michaela’s beta, I found myself climbing into the stand which already knew the moves and then climbed it to the top. For grading it, looks like some think V14 and some think V13, I honestly don’t know. Michaela sprayed me down with all her beta that she had to figure out for herself and it suited me really well!"

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