Nice video of Ignacio Mulero climbing some new problems up to 8B+ FA's in a brand new area in La Pedriza, Spain. Video by David López. La Pedriza is one of the biggest crags in Europe that still remains relatively unknown. New areas keep being devoloped every year, making La Pedriza one of the best granite destinations in Europe, and just 40 min from Madrid airport. The Pedriza Bouldering Guidebook updated 2nd Edition is coming up in 2018 by local boulderers Talo Martín & Roser Giralt, teamed up with Vertical Life, compeling 80 sectors and over 2500 boulders, including kids sectors and many more, making the Albarracín-Pedriza combination a serious option to consider. La Pedriza is mainly known by the unique character of its 4000 routes, where technical slabs up to 8c+ get along with face and overhanging sport climbing, 8c trad, 8b multipitch and A5 in aid climbing.

Thomas Dauser has done his second 9a, The Essential in Frankenjura which took him a total of eight days. (c) Ole Koenig "In a major battle, I climbed "The Essential" (9a) on Saturday. After my foot slipped twice at the last move to the jug, I finally climbed it in the 6th try on this day... and impressed myself. More exhausted than the previous tries, but very focused... seems like a rare moment where the mind wins over simple physical power."

Obsession is the greatest force to make you train and push harder in climbing. It is about getting addicted to the adrenaline rush and just love everything about climbing; the challenges, the scenery, exploring, the community friendship, improving and performing on competitions and grades. It is about having the most fun and for some it is like building a wider pyramid to make it more solid so you can reach higher. For others and especially for the most obsessed ones, reaching higher is not the ultimate goal. Instead, they just love everything about climbing equally much and just because of this, they have the most fun and this automatically take them to new levels. Sure, in the short run, loosing weight or doing a short training program where you can measure progress is a great feeling. On the other hand some will feel they sacrifice something and that can create anxiety ones the performance trend stagnate or make a sudden dip. Being a climber mainly driven by performance, it is a difficult task to stay obsessed for a long time and it is very hard to start appreciate all other aspects of climbing equally as much. One way to broaden your perspective is simply to set your goals on making your grade pyramid wider and instead of going for your first 8a, set the bar at doing twenty 7b out of which five onsight.

Florian Schmalzl, who previously has done two 8C's, has done the FA of a stunning line called Sierra Madre in Zillertal. In fact he did not give it a grade but talking to his friends who had tried it they all think it could be 8C. "All in all, cleaning it, finding the beta and climbing it, it took me ten days."

1. Akiyo Noguchi 44 JPN - Kokoro Fujii 33 JPN 2. Miho Nonaka 33 JPN - Sean McColl 23:2 CAN 3. Stasa Gejo SRB 13 - Alexey Rubtsov 23:5 RUS Complete results (In order to simplify, 8a presents the results as points and if needed the number of attempts.) Japan was ahead in Chongqing and that counts especially among the female where Akiyo Noguchi and Miho Nonaka were superior also in the semifinal. Kokoro Fujii was last one into the final and won in a kind of boring final with one problem too hard and one too easy. It must be mentioned that #1 and #2 in the female WC in 2017, Janja Garnbret and Shauna Coxey, as well as #1 among the male, Jongwon Chon did choose to not participate. Chon will be back next weekend in Tai'an. In the Speed, Mickael Mawem was best among the top boulder guys with 6.81. Kokoro Fujii was fourth with 7.83 as his best in the qually just some 90 min before he started the boulder final. It should be noted that Sean McColl who has been doing Speed events for several years had more than ten boulder specialists in front of him. Among the female, only a handful boulder specialist participated and Akiyo Noguchi was best of the top boulderers with 12.43.

1. Jernej Kruder SLO 227 - Miho Nonaka JPN 260 2. Tomoa Narasaki JPN 211 - Akiyo Noguchi JPN 230 3. Alexey Rubtsov RUS 181 - Janja Garnbret SLO 180 4. Kokoro Fujii JPN 145 - Fanny Gibert FRA 148 5. Jakob Schubert AUT 115 - Jessica Pilz AUT 118 In the Complete results, IFSC have only counted the two best results. It should also be noted that Janja Garnbret will not do the whole WC in 2018. In comparison to 2017, Jessica Pilz is the only new name in the top, beside Jernej Kruder who was #8 last year. Among the Top-20, nine male are from Japan.

99: Peter Ivanov BUL - Urska Repusic SLO 01: Davide Colombo ITA - Sandra Lettner AUT 03: Eliot Barnabe FRA - Naile MeignanFRA Complete results

Choong Katherine, #2 in the 8a ranking game, has been an active competition climber since 2006 and actually she had her best year in 2017 being four times Top-16 in Lead. One reason for this was that she finished law school in 2016 and then did a four months trip to Spain and France. "After this last trip, I was in a very good shape. I realized that I really need rock climbing to be strong for the competitions. Training is very personal but for me rock climbing give me lot of endurance but more important confident and motivation. I decided to take one year off from February 2018 just for climbing. My main goals are the lead WCs but I also have some projects outside. I’m currently working on Era Vella since a little bit more than a week and I fell last weekend a few meters under the chains. I hope to finish the route until Sunday the 6th May but right now after the rain the conditions are not really good. Anyway I will try my best :) Then there is some others hard routes I really want to climb in Switzerland for example in Gimmelwald or Rawyl. I also want to do more multi pitch routes, why not try a hard multipitch route this year if I have time? But I need for sure to get more experience, I’m still a beginner."

Qualifying results: Ten male Japaneses in Top-25 and seven made it to the semifinal. Gabri Moroni and Keita Watabe were the only big names that did not make it through. Nathan Philips who has been around #30 in the two first WCs in 2018, won the qually with five straight flashes! Two Speed celebs did try Boulder scoring one respectively zero zones. Time schedule Saturday GMT+8 09:30-11:45 Bouldering Semi-Finals (LIVE) 12:00-14:00 Speed Qualification 14:30-15:30 Speed Finals (LIVE) 16:45-20:00 Bouldering Finals (LIVE)