Moritz Welt has had two great weeks doing three 8B's and Crashpad Dummy 8B+ in Frankenjura. Amazingly he just needed one session for each boulder. During the last year the 17 year old has done 67 boulders and 8A and harder and 73 routes 8a+ and harder and he is #4 in the Combined ranking. "I think my goal was trying some lines I've never tried before cause I became a little frustrated on my other projects. So expectations were quite low and I was able to be as relaxed as possible while bouldering. All ascents were super rewarding, but most of all "Airbus" because it's so rarely repeated and I love reactivating old and forgotten lines!"

Heiko Queitsch, #1 highest ranked in the 8a Gallery with also eight pics Top-20, enjoys bouldering during the winter. In the first pic by Tobias Plail he does Lego Technik direkt 8A in -14 without hand warmers or any special trick when he is out there. "Little Warming up.. .jumping, running, and easy moves. In the second pic by Frank Kretschmann he is doing the FA of Claude Monet 8A+. His coldest ascent was done in -25 degrees. "Basically I enjoy the peaceful atmosphere in the snow-covered forest. The conditions are often better in winter, since the rock is drier then, and the skin harder. Those crisp conditions allow me to climb moves that I can’t even dream of doing in summer or in warmer conditions. Before I approach my current project, I warm up at my indoor wall at home. It takes truly warm boots, a proper duvet jacket and lots of hot tea to keep the body warm in the freezing cold. Best, however, is a bunch of good friends crazy and motivated enough to go out into the cold, too. A great advantage is that it takes a lot to make me feel cold, at least minus 20°. I have, however, become “softer” than I used to be."

Moritz Perwitzschky, #5 in the Combined ranking, has done Crowbar 8B+ in Frankenjura in winter conditions. "10 moves of steep roof climbing, five tension moves (7B) lead to the crux move, far span from a quite good hold to a slopy pocket, after that still tension climbing with a toehook for 4 more moves, I fell four times on the last hard move cause of loosing the tension. For me personally it gets hard to get and stay warm if it's colder than - 5°. If it's below 0° for me warm clothes and gloves are enough and probably boulders with less than 10 moves are a better choice. You also get used to it quite fast actually."

La Sportiva celebrates its 90th anniversary with a reboot of its climbing line: there are 5 classic models involved in the modernization operation with more modern designs and aesthetic solutions in line with the times. Make way then for the new versions of Miura, Futura, Cobra, Katana and Solution!

The Olympic qualification will be at focus during 2019. Many of the best athletes like Adam Ondra will most likely reduce their climbing on rock and instead replace it with competition training including Speed. During the last years, Japan has started to dominate and that goes especially on the bouldering scene. The dilemma in 2019 is that it is all about Combination and only the best male and female Japanese in the World Champion in Tokyo are guaranteed a position, as long as they are Top-6. This means that the overall World Cup is not so important for the best Japanese so they might cherry pick which comps to go for. This in fact opens up for specialist, who is not going for Tokyo, to win the overall World Cups, especially among the male. However, in general most likely to trend with more Japanese domination will increase in 2019. When it comes to route climbing, there will most likely be a stagnation, after the record year 2018, as most of the best focus on Tokyo. In regards bouldering, 2018 was also a record year and 2019 has indeed strengthen this progress trend with Charles Albert doing a 9A FA barefoot and Jimmy Webb, Daniel Woods and Nalle Hukkataival doing 8C+. Charles and Jimmy are working on two other possibly 9A projects in Fontainebleau and Daniel is going for Burden of Dreams 9A this spring. In total, there will probably be around ten guys doing at least one 8C+ or harder in 2019. At the same time, the female level continues to raise and possibly ten girls, including 13 year old Oriane Bertone, just might do 8B+ or harder.

Christof Rauch has done Toni Lamprect's Bokassa's Frigde - Assassin Monkey and Man in Kochel giving it a personal 8C grade. Lamprect video shows it is like an elimination where the left of from the dihedral is not allowed to use. FA article form 2009. "Booom! Second ascent, ten years after Toni made the FA! Sick fridge with perfect compression moves. Thanks to Toni and the crew for the support! Took me quite a few sessions. Last year I injured my left biceps/shoulder on it and it took a lot of time to get fully recovered. "

Daniel Woods reports on Insta that Nalle Hukkataival has done the third ascent Sleepwalker 8C+ in Red Rocks. The FA was done by Jimmy Webb, video, in December and last week Daniel Woods did the second ascent. Now Daniel is working on the sitstart link up to the seven moves 8C+, where the easiest is 7C.

We have previously said that standing longjump is a good measurement to check the Speed climbing potential. The Norwegian coach Reino Horak has mentioned that 2.80 cm could be an indication if you could go sub 7 seconds. Another method to value your potential is to just focus on the first five moves (4 using the Narasaki skip) and measure your time. The 5.60 world record time had a split time of some 1.5 sec. Narasaki reaches his fourth move after some 1.8 sec when he does sub 7 seconds. So instead of training 20 sessions to check the natural talent for the full 15 meter Speed climbing having a problem with the sequence etc, it might be better to just spend five sessions focusing on the first five moves. If you can not get close to 2.0 seconds, it might be very hard to get below eight seconds. However, it should be mentioned that the best female, who have done 7.32 seconds, reach move five after some 2.3 seconds. In other words, they loose much more time in the start in comparison of the finish. One explanation for this is that it is better to be taller and more explosive in the start compared with the finish.