Vertical-Life July Challenge "Mark your sent routes and boulders with a "Zlag!" in the Vertical-Life app, collect 450 meters or 100 boulder problems and be rewarded. Lots of great prizes are waiting for you again. Of course also the ascents in your climbing gym count.

Nina Williams has done her second 8B, The Shining in RMNP. In the 8a ranking game, the 28 yer old is #3. "One punt and four sessions later, on the eve of a full moon, it happened!! All before the snow landing turned into a lake! And my shoe didn't fall off this time. A Cinderella ending ^_^"

Fanatic climbing reports that some of Dai Koayamada's hard core boulders have been chopped.

Piotr Schab has added an onsight of Punch on ire 8c in Cuenca to his scorecard with an interesting ethical comment. "Done the route, but the foothold broke moments before clipping the chain." Climbing is an interesting sport with no referees where we the community has developed the ethics and rules. There is often no black or white and instead there are often different shades of grey. 8a has published some practice and ethics based on a traffic light green-yellow-red system. I think Piotr's ascent is valid and support him for being open so everyone can have their own opinion. Sometimes the anchor is placed too high creating an unnatural crux of a route. In such case, you can gladly tick the route even if you could not clip the anchor but you should consider giving it a lower grade.

Filip Schenk, #2 in the last year Combined World Youth Championship and who has won the latest Euro Youth Cups in both Lead and Boulder, has done his first 9a, Le Cadre Nouvelle in Céüse. This was the 18 year old's first trip to Céüse and he he only needed two days for taking the 9a down. (c) Cit Seeit In 100 days, he will compete in the Youth Games in Buenos Aires. "For me the training has not changed as much after climbing became olympic, except that I started to do also some speed training but the other two disciplines, boulder and lead, I have always trained so that stayed the same. Yes of curse I would like to take part at the Olympic games but its really hard for me to qualify so I will try to do my best at the Youth Olympic Games this year and than I will see.

Martin Mobråten has repeated Daniel Woods’ Spray of Light 8C in Rocklands. This was the 36 year old norweigian’s first 8C after having done some ten 8B+’. Worked it a lot 2 years ago, but felt way stronger this year and sent it quite fast. I think the reason for me being strong now is that i have rested more than usual because of getting married and finishing a book about training for climbing. I normally climb way too much so when i am forced to rest i tend to get strong.”

Based on 800+ unique votes, "What would be your dream experience? In brackets the result to a similar poll in 2010. 22 % Having done Action Directe (23) 16 % To do an 8C+ boulder (14) 15 % 2 weeks big wall FA (11) 14 % To do 9c (9b+: 10) 08 % DWS Es Pontas 9b, Solo El Capitain (16) 06 % Winning Olympic gold (WCH 5) 03 % Stand on Mount Everest (5) 06 % Others (7)

Adam Ondra has done the second ascent of Martin Stranik’s Tekute Stesi 8C in Moravsky Kars. Video In total there are nine Czech Republic 8C’s and harder in the 8a database out of which Adam has done seven.

Tomoa Narasaki reports on Insta that he won the Japanese Combined Championship and set a new Speed record at 6.87. 8a has previously said that he is one of the favourites to take the Olympic gold in Tokyo 2020. At this point, Tomoa should be considered the number one candidate together with Adam Ondra.