Stephan Schibli, who previously has made seven 9a and harder FAs, has repeated his first 9a, Fingertest in Muotathal. “I tried the route a few years ago. Last summer for the last time, but it was definitely too warm and nothing worked. This year in good conditions I wanted to try the route again, because after a few first ascents of this level, repeating this route had long been on my wish list. In my opinion, some holds were missing in the upper part. I then found a solution a little on the left and was able to score the route the next day in top conditions.”

It seems none of your seven 9a and 9a+ FAs has been repeated? Why is that do you think?
It's not like the routes are in some area where nobody goes. Rather, they are in the classic areas of Central Switzerland. However, the style of the routes probably does not suit many top climbers. Technically difficult climbing on extremely small holds.

It should be mentioned that the 49-year-old also has made the FA of five 8c+, the first in 2001 and the last seven weeks ago. It seems that just one of them have been repeated.

Moritz Welt has done the FA of Star Shopping 9a in Frankenjura, which had been bolted by Werner Thon. In total, the 20-year-old has done 14 9a’s, out of which seven the last year. (c) Lars Decker

”After checking the route for the first time I instantly knew that was the kind of line I was searching for. It's a 25meters high wall with a 10m roof in the middle that has just one pure sequence of holds to climb on. You basically climb some 7c to a no hands ledge, and after some easy approach it's 10 consecutive hard moves through the roof. After that you have some 8a climbing to the top. At the beginning I was struggling a lot with the single moves, but after checking out everything perfectly it went faster than expected. In total it took me 6 sessions.”

A total of 289 athletes are registered to compete in the Innsbruck World Cup. In Bouldering there are 119 males and 96 females in the starting list and in Lead, 108 males and 81 females.

Interesting is that some Olympians like the Mawem brothers and Alexey Rubtsov will only compete in Bouldering and that Rishat Khaibullin will only participate in Lead. Furthermore, Olympian Aleksandra Miroslaw who won Speed in Salt Lake City, will not compete and the same goes for Iuliia Kaplina. Great Britain and China are missing from the starting list meaning Shauna Coxey, YiLing Song and YuFei Pan will not participate.

23/6 Lead qualifications
24/6 Boulder qualifications
25/6 Lead semi and final
26/6 Boulder semi and final

In 2019, Jimmy Webb did the FA of Sleepwalker 8C+. Then in 2021, Daniel Woods started working on a sit start adding a seven moves 8B, creating ROTSW 9A. The 31-year-old has the best ticklist in the world and it took him 70+ days to do his first 9A, out of which the last 16 days, he was alone camping in the canyon.

Zhao Lei, Team Manager of Chinese Climbing Team, reports with a video on Insta that a 16-year-old has unofficially set a new Speed record - 5.106.

Siebe Vanhee and Sébastien Berthe’s have repeated Fly 8c (in Lauterbrunnen, which is 550 meters divided into 20 pitches. Roger Schaeli opened it and the Alex Megos did the FA in 2014. Impressively Seb and Sébastient did it ground-up in only three days and they both gave it a personal 8b+ grade and the second hardest pitch to be 8b. (c) Julia Cassou

"Seb and I left the base at 7am in the morning, with our portaledge and haul bag fully packed for an autonomous sent. The aim of the day was to reach the ledge below pitch 17, swinging leads, climbing everything free and hauling our household with us. It seemed like an ambitious plan considering the heavy packs and the sustained grading in the high 7th grade. But the sooner we got on the ledge the sooner we could tackle the three upper cruxpitches. The first nine pitches are slabby, hard to read and were quite dirty. This didn’t hinder us to climb them almost all onsight, except for two 7c’s. We were surprisingly quick, at 2:30pm we arrived at the ledge, just in time to get roasted in the sun without losing precious skin on our fingers! That same night, Julia joined us on the ledge and installed some static lines to shoot our ascent from above the following days. An early morning start was necessary to get as much shade as possible. This west facing wall gets sun at 2pm. This time Seb started off, he immediately onsighted the 8b (pitch 17) off the ledge. Setting the bar high for the day! I was nervous but managed to quickly flash the route after my partner while Julia was dangling above us capturing every emotion. We continued the climb with a 7b+ pitch up to the start of the crux of the whole line, graded 8c. I took off first, for a long journey towards the anchor. Slowly I found the beta, brushed and marked all the holds to make it look like a climbable piece of rock. Tackling an 8c pitch on an alpine limestone multipitch can be quite intimidating. There is dirt, no chalk and an incredibly exposed atmosphere! After Seb worked the moves, I gave it a solid go but fell due to a hold that broke in the easier section. I gave it a third go. I felt tired, had no skin left and climbed nervous but dedicated to send, which I did! The sun started to hit the wall, a good reason for Seb to save his energy and skin for the next morning. We descended back to our portaledge camp and started our second sunbathing session.

Day three, for me there was only one pitch left. Seb was in a more stressful position this time, having to still send the cruxpitch. First thing in the morning, mentally strong as he is, he cruised the pitch up to the anchor. My turn again to work out the moves of the last, 8b+, pitch. This pitch is a 15 meter slabclimb with one powerful move of a small flat crimp. Move by move I brushed and found the beta again, it didn’t seem too bad in the end. Again, Seb took his turn and worked the moves. I gave it a try and fell after the crux move due to a microscopic edge that broke below my ring finger. I came down immediately and gave it a third go straight away. With two fingertips taped and two others completely cracked and bleeding I crimped through the section and send this last pitch! There was no option to recover skin or put on more tape. Anyway, for a last pitch of such a difficult and long multipitch I didn’t care about the skin anymore. Although I reached the anchor, it wasn’t over yet. Seb still had to send. Two more tries later he did and the joy was felt by all three of us! A third and fourth freeascent of ‘Fly’, an amazing adventure on the wall, quality images and some great vibes with a cool crew!"

The Euro Youth Cup in Ostermundigen showed again very good results for Eastern Europe and that Austria, who has dominated the scene for several years, struggle. In the two female youngest categories, Czechia won two golds and among the boys, Slovenia and Hungary won. In male Youth A, Hungary had three boys in Top-7. Olympian, Alberto Ginés López won as he also did last weekend.

02: Alberto Ginés López ESP - Camille Pouget FRA
04: Gergö Valyi HUN - Marketa Janosova CZE
06: Gorazd Jureković SLO - Barbora Bernardova CZE

The most superior winners were López and Valyi, who also won last weekend.

Akiyo Noguchi and Tomoa Narasaki won the Japan Combined Cup which only included Lead and Boulder. A new scoring system was tested where the winners got 100 points in each discipline.

1. Akiyo Noguchi 200 - Tomoa Narasaki 200
2. Miho Nonaka - Kokoro Fuji
3. Saari Watanabe - Yoshiyuki Ogata
It should be noted that Olympian Kai Harada was not listed in the Top-8.

In a separate Speed event, Nonaka and Narasaki won getting 7.88 respectively 5.90 as their fastest race. These times are superior among the non-Speed specialists in Tokyo and actually you could win doing 5.90 in Tokyo.

Nicola Vonarburg, who started climbing in 1985, has done his fourth 8c+, by the FA of Missfonda in Cevio. (c) Egon Bernasconi

“I lost count of how many times I had to redo the first part of Miss! (8b) Then in a day with bad conditions the miracle! The central crossbar is spectacular! On the degree then we will see even if in the end it interests me little, the journey and the satisfaction of clipping that chain was more important than a number on 8a.nu!“

In total, the 48-year-old has during the last five years done 41 FAs, 8b and harder. His only other appearances in the 8a news was in 2012, with the headline, “... (39) at his peak”, doing his second 8c+.

Sometimes the anchor is placed so it is almost impossible to come down from the anchor without creating a massive rope drag and wear of the rope. If you want to toprope such a route, one possible solution is to pull down an extra full rope length to the ground and "tie in with a Grigri", including a safety knot below. Then you can climb and your partner pulls in and belay like normal. Once at the top, you just take out the safety knot and rappel down with your GriGri. It should be mentioned that the suggested method should only be tried on routes where you do not take multiple falls. All falls, will wear the rope so you should absolutely not fall several times on the same spot.

Before you start doing this advanced technology make sure you put safety knots on both ends of the rope. Remember that you need as much rope below the climber's Grigri as the route is long.