National Geographic has appointed Babsi Zangerl as one of their adventures of the year presenting her in a long great interview focusing on her repeat of Magic Mushroom in 2017. She did it together with her partner Jacopo Larcher and it was the first and second repeat of the 950 meter long route including pitches up to 8b+ which was set up by Tommy Caldwell in 2005. 8a has for many years said that Babsi is the best allrounder in the world. In 2008, she did the first female 8B boulder and then in 2009, she got an herniated vertebral disc which had her to stop bouldering. In 2017, she did an 8c trad and in 2018 she also did her first 9a. Strangely, nothing of this is mentioned in the article. In total, there are five adventurer of the year and the other climbing related is Maureen Beck, disabled climber without left arm below the elbow who has won the Para Climbing Championship twice and in 2018, she got the bronze.

Alizée Dufraisse reports on Facebook that Dave Graham has finally done La Rambla 9a+ in Siurana. More info to come.

Guntram Jörg has done his second 8C, Arzak in Murgtal which was put up by Fred Nicole. The Austrian was one of the leading boulders until 2015 when he got busy with setting up boulder gyms and finishing his study in economics. "Well - back to business of hard bouldering! First repeat after two holds broke off. Very physical boulder - the crux is linking all the moves. This line has everything: It´s hard, scary, long and good looking. Proud to climb something like this! Before I started with my climbing gym business my number one passion was establishing new boulders and repeating hard lines. In the last years my focus has changed and I have a lot of other things going on. I have responsibility for two companies and a lot of great employee. There are many goals to be reached, not just in bouldering outdoors."

Stefano Ghisolfi has been #2 in the Lead World Cup the last two years at the same time he has done four 9b's as well as a 9b+, last December. This year his focus is qualifying to the Olympics and he just won the Italian Cup in Bouldering. When it comes to Speed he was the Italian Champion in 2010 at 7.96 which has made him take it kind of slow with the Speed focus until now. In other words, the Italian is both one of the best rock climbers at the same time he is one of the contenders for a medal in Tokyo 2020. (c) Sara Grippo from Queen Line 9b he did three days ago. How have you been training this winter and what is your next focus? After Perfecto Mundo (9b+), in January and February my focus has been mostly competition bouldering, I trained a lot on my weakness (slabs, coordination, jumps) and in February I was already improving and I won the first Italian Cup. During the week I choose to go rock climbing for one day per week, and I started trying the Queen line. The focus continues to be bouldering and improving in speed too, I'm running around 8 seconds The comps I planned to do are the first four of bouldering, and all the lead circuit, and some of the speed ones. The main focus will be Tokyo and Tolouse if I don't qualify in Tokyo. I hope to do under 7.50, I think it could be enough for qualifying, but i could be wrong. I will continue climbing outdoor once a week, I'm lucky to live in Arco so I can go half day outdoor and even train in the afternoon, Laghel is just 10 minutes from home. Now I will try another project there, the King Line, that has a harder ending to the Queen Line and is at least 9b+, and there are still other 2 possible 9b or harder routes there, my rock projects for this year will be close to home so I can still focus on training without traveling too much, because I will travel a lot for competition already. What kind of impact will the Olympics have for the federations and the athletes? Olympics had a strong impact in our federation, the focus now is 100% on the people who want and can qualify for Tokyo and want to train in the combined, and unfortunately the choose not to have specialist (for the single discipline) in the world cup circuit, so many strong climbers in bouldering and speed will be cut out the world cup circuit to let the combined climbers to compete. There will be a huge split between competition climbers (that will try to qualify for Tokyo) and rock climbers (probably all the specialist who cannot compete in the world cup will focus on rock climbing).

The highest mountain/hill in Denmark is 171 meters. Now their climbing federation reports that they have started to build a 80 meter wall outside a CHP plant. The wall will be 9 meters wide including five bolt lines separated in four pitches. The most overhanging pitch will be four meters.

song yunchan, who started climbing 27 months ago and who won the Asia Youth Championship in Bouldering last year, has been on a 1.5 months trip to Railay which he finished by doing Avocado Power 8b+. "The Korean school will start a new semester in March. So I was able to go to Thailand by using the school winter vacation. For the first 2 weeks, I adapted my body to the local condition there. Then I tried to climb the target Avocado Power(8b+) while adjusting. There were many difficulties especially that it was a bit far between holds due to my short height (146 cm). I still feel happy thinking about it and am proud of myself. My goal in 2019 is to go back to Thailand and challenge 8c+ and to win in Asia K Climbing Championship - China 2019.

The first big competition in 2019 starts the next weekend, The CWIF. Here is a prediction of who will qualify to the Olympics without any knowledge from the 2019 season. It would make no sense to predict who will win the World Cups as very few of the top climbers will give this the highest priority. The Combined World Championship takes place outside Tokyo 11 - 22 July and the Top-7 will qualify to the Olympics. The country quota is two but for Japan it is just one as the second one will be selected by their federation. This means that it will probably be good enough to be Top-10 to get an Olympic ticket. In Innsbruck last year, Japan had four male and three female in the Top-8. Here is a prediction of who will qualify to Tokyo from the 2019 most important competition: 1. Tomoa Narasaki JPN - Janja Garnbret SLO 2. Adam Ondra CZE - Miho Nonaka JPN 3. Jakob Schubert AUT - Jessica Pilz AUT 4. (Kokoro Fujii JPN) - (Mei Kotake JPN) 5. Stefano Ghisolfi ITA - (Akiyo Noguchi JPN) 6. Jan Hojer GER - Ashima Shiraishi USA 7. (Meichi Narasaki JPN) - Sandra Lettner AUT 8. (Keita Dohi JPN) - Petra Klingler SUI 9. Mickel Mawem FRA - (Laura Stöckler AUT) 10. (Kai Harada JPN) - Stasa Gejo SRB 11. Jernej Kruder SLO

Gambaro Matteo, who won the Italian Lead Cup in 2005, has done his fourth 9a, Esclatamasters in Perles. Some years ago it was down graded to 8c+ but since a hold break, it is one again by most considered 9a. "Me and Elena (Chiappa) are on holidays for two weeks. I tried it for five days and did it in ten attempts in total. Today very warm so I climbed at 18.00. Incredible line." So how did you prepare for this trip? I climb hard and I bolt a lot at home in Val Pennavaire (Albenga). I opened the hardest lines and this winter I decided to train again as in my past competition years.

Joe Cardwell, who previously has done three 9a+', reports on Insta that he has done Joe Mama 9a+ in Oliana. (c) William What is next and what was the trick to arrive to Spain in such super shape? Next is a couple routes I’ve been trying at other crags. Also just enjoying climbing here in Catalonia with a fun crew. We’ve been visiting numerous areas instead of fixating on one spot which has been really refreshing. The majority of the training I did before was primarily bouldering and power endurance circuits, slightly different approach to what I’ve done in the past. It also didn’t hurt that I tried the route in Oliana quite a bit last spring in terrible conditions, it was almost constantly wet which made it hard to give it continuous effort. This season it’s warmer but everything is dry which made a huge difference!

"About 30 moves and if I had to put a grade on it I’d say it’s comparable to a 9a route. I know there is a travers rating system but no idea how it works. Anyone know what this could be?" Travers grading is in between the boulder and lead difficulty. A 9a route is more or less the same in difficulty as to do 8B+/C. In other words, Sharma's FA travers could be travers graded 8C/+. On the other hand, 8a has for many years said that it is just confusing to use travers grading as it is impossible to draw a line when a boulder qualifies to be travers graded. 8a use small letters when the difficulty is based on the route grading system and big letters for boulder graded climbs.