Daniel Jung, who has done a dozen 9a or harder including La Rambla, reports on Instagram that he has done the FA of Jamais Deux Sans Toit 9a+ (9a) in Mollans. (c) Hannes Kutza

It is normally the local climbers that bolt the new routes, rebolt, clean, work with access issues and produce the topos. Sales from the topos often contribute for bolts etc. During the years, we have seen many foreign companies more or less copying the local ones just in order to make commercial profit. On the sign found i St Leger, we can see that the locals ask the climbing community to support the local by buying their topo and not the "Vampire Topo". The company doing most such competitive topos just to make profit is a UK company. This happened in southern France, Mallorca etc and now it could be the case in Kalymnos.

Dani Andrada, one of the pioneers around Lleida making it a world class destination, reports on his Instagram account the FA of Poderosa Afrodita R2 9a in Siurana, Spain. © David Munilla "Two parts, a hard 8c+ and an 8b/+ above... A route I bolted 3 years ago in El Pati, Siurana. More motivation venga!"

IFSC has changed the bouldering scoring increasing the importance for zones as this is the second criteria after number of Tops. Until 2017, attempts to Tops was the second criteria but from 2018, it will be the third criteria. The impact from an athlete's perspective should be minor but in practice it would probably mean that we will see less resting and more attempts as long as the zone have not been reached. Previously, it was possibly more wise for the athletes, who had not reached the zone in several attempts, to just skip another try and focus on resting. Even if you today flash three boulders, you need to get the zone on the fourth as your opponent, with three tops in 15 tries and all four zones, will beat you. As a side note it should also be mentioned that with the new scoring, the results can be presented with points where 44 is maximum meaning you have done all four boulders. The official results will be published 4T4z 7 attempts and if the results are tied also the number of attempts for the zones will be added.

Last year, Japan totally dominated the IFSC boulder World Cup scene with five guys in Top-8. The North Face Cup in Tokyo last weekend indicates that it might be an even stronger Japanese domination in 2018 as the WC winner 2017, Jongwon Chon was just #7 and WC #2 Tomoa Narasaki was not on the podium. Instead it was Kai Harada, #16 in the WC 2017, who won ahead of Fujiwaki Yuji. In 2017, Harada and Yuji was on average #24 based on 13 World Cups. This indicates of course that there just might be an even more extreme Japanese male domination in 2018. It should be mentioned that the format is a bit different with more boulders in the qualification and semi, also including two zones. In the final, they have a knock-out system. Yuji Hirayama explains; "I love knock out format, you can share the moment with everyone much more direct than IF format and this format is fair enough to select the champion. It is not making the ranking. We started knock out format since 1998." Among the female, Miho Nonaka won ahead of Akiyo Noguchi and Natsuki Tanii. Complete results in Japanese.

As the winter has hard time to let go in Europe and everyone is keen to get out we can get inspired by Petter Ulmert who sent an 8b+ outside Göteborg in 3 degrees minus fully cloudy. To make the story even better, Petter is 49 years old and this was his hardest ever and he has done 7-8 similar trips during the winter, meaning six hours in the car. "It was cold as hell and I fell twice on the last move as I could not feel my fingers. It is hard to warm up specifically for it. On my third attempt it did go down. (c) Hampus Räf

IFSC has changed the boulder scoring so the number of zones is the second criteria which might make it easier to analyze the scoreboard. At the same time it could be more complicated for the commentator to present it as well as for the audience to understand it. "Ondra leads by one top in one attempt followed by Chon, one top in two attempts and Narasaki one top in three attempts", is how commentators normally present the ranking and how it was done in CWIF last Sunday. The problem is that it just might be that Chon and Narasaki has done one more zones and with the new rule, zones being the second criteria, Ondra is #3. In practice this means that the first sentence needs to be presented like this. "Chon is in the lead with one top and two zones in two attempts ahead of Narasaki with one top and two zones in three attempts followed by Ondra with one top and one zone in one attempt. " In other words, until 2017 you only had to present two criterias to get a good separation but from 2018, you almost always will have to present three criterias. Presenting and understanding a ranking with three criterias instead of just two will be more complicated. One option to make it much easier for both the commentators as well as the audience, could be to just replace the definition Top with 10 points and zone with 1 point. Even the non-climbers would fully understand. "Chon leads with 12 points and two attempts followed by Narasaki also on 12 points but three attempts and Ondra with 11 points in one attempt."

Daisuke Ichimiya, who last autumn did Creature from the black lagoon 8C+ in RMNP, has repeated Dai Koyamda's Gekirin 8C in Ryutosen. "It has unique holds in a hard traverse and with a dead point crimper crux. I did suffer for the crux move. After practicing the moves, it took me some 12 tries. My next project is a new boulder on the same block. (c) Chikara Ishizuka

Moritz Welt has done his first 8B+, Hips don´t lie sit 8B+ in Frankenjura and the 16 year old goes to #2 in the junior ranking game. "Finally my little nemesis is over! After a lot of sessions where i was ill or nearly every hold was wet, I finally did the last remaining boulder at this spot! Definitely my hardest problem until now!"