Clément Lechaptois, who the last two weeks has done a Font 8B+ as well as being #5 in the French Nationas, has done his first 8C by Malédiction assis in Rioupéroux. "Finally!!! What a battle... It took me ~15 sessions after that I did the (8B) stand-start in 2016! The line is complete now... The sit adds only 4 moves to the stand start but it's enough for it becomes a way harder! We'll see what the next repetitors say about the grade. Soooo happy to finally have finished it off! I didn't do a specific training for that boulder. But I train regularly to progress in climbing in general. I am passionated about rock climbing for years... I always try to improve my weaknesses."

Vertical-Life is expanding its team in Brixen/Bressanone, Northern Italy. If you are a passionate marketing manager, visual designer or web developer and you love climbing – please get in touch and send your application to [email protected]. Marketing manager Develop innovative marketing strategies, create engaging campaigns and put communication ideas into practice. Required skills: - Strategic marketing planning - Campaign planning and execution - Experience in social media and digital marketing - Language skills: English, German Visual and UI designer Transform innovative concepts into beautiful user experiences, design inspiring graphics for both digital and print. Required skills: - Strong and flexible skills in visual and graphic design - Proficiency with brand design - Experience in UX and interaction design - Experience in the agile process of software development Web developer Develop and maintain our various web applications. Required skills: - Ruby on Rails - Javascript - HTML5 & CSS - Object oriented programming - Relational databases Desired skills: - Vue.js - Node.js

Nina Williams shares her great story for how she did Bambi 8A+ in Matthew Winters on her Instagram and 8a. This was her fifth 8A+ this winter and she is #4 in the ranking game, just three points below ranking #2. (c) Eddie Fowke "Two days ago I solo-sessioned one of my nemesis projects with two pads. I worked the moves in sections, starting with the middle, then the end, and finally the beginning, refreshing my muscle memory. I figured I would come back another day with 4-5 pads and a couple spotters. Yet all of a sudden I found myself through the crux from the start I hadn’t had any thoughts of sending; I was just climbing!" On her 8a scorecard she reveals the amazing lucky story for the send. "Hit the pocket from the start all by my lonesome, with one pad for the end. Cheers to Derek, Ben, and Annika walking up right at that moment to spot the topout. Sure felt hard to me..."

La Danse des Balrogs was put up by Fred Nicole in 1991 as the world's first 8B but many hade said it is 8A+. Here is Dorothea Karalus pretty obsessed story actually doing several 700 km solo trips to it. She has previously done one 8B and some ten 8A+'.

La Danse Des Balrogs, world's first 8B from Dorothea Karalus on Vimeo.

A great show in CWIF was won by Alma Bestvater and Kokoro Fujii. Big favorite Stasa Gejo was only four but with the old rules she would have taken the silver. Here is the scoring based on points/attempts, if needed, and the official scoring with Tops Zones and Attempts. The standing scoring was occasionally shown on the screen but anyhow, the commentators could sometimes not give the correct conditions before the last boulder. (c) Eddie Fowke 1. Kokoro Fujii 44 points (6 attempts) - 4T4z 6A 2. Alex Khazanov 44 (9) - 4T4z 9A 3. Tim Reuser 34 - 3T4z 4A 1. Alma Bestvater 24 - 2T4z 3A 2. Michaela Tracey 14 (3) - 1T4z 3A 3. Leah Crane 14 (4) - 1T4z 4A

Caroline Sinno has spent the weekend in Targassonne where she did Bouillon de culture 8B and she is #9 in the ranking game. "So happy and such a memorable fight! Props to Rackam for putting up this cool line. Nice moves on slopers and then into a tiny crack. Felt harder than la cicatrice de l'ohm in the same style in Font. I like Targassonne because once you get used to the rock, which is granite, you can really find cool boulder problems. It’s a nice scenery in the Pyrenees, no one there and weather is very often perfect."

Chipping means normally that somebody has used a hammer or similar to artificially make a route easier to fit the FA capacity. In other cases, it is done to even out a 7a route that has an 8b crux or sometimes it is done to make a hold less sharp. Chipping was quite popular in the 90-ies especially in France and Italy and also today, the smoothing of holds or even out easier routes occurs. On the other hands, setting up new hard routes based on drilling or hammering out holds are rarely done and if so, most think this is really bad. One way of reducing future chipping is simply to mark them as "Chipped" in the 8a data base. As a matter of a fact, the the hard core climber using this feature most frequently is Adam Ondra. Already in 2018, he has markes eight routes as chipped.

Ben Moon, one of the greatest climber in the history, created the Moonboard in 2005 which has been a smash hit including the App and led marked boulders, introduced in 2016. Lately, we have seen many have copied the invention and it will probably not take long until the climbing wall producers will give us 15 meter high MoonBoards. Imagine going to your gym where you can choose from 10 000+ routes marked with led lamps or similar instead of just having new routes every other months on a panel. Sure there can be walls where the route setters can create routes in the normal way and of course the holds on the Moon board needs to be washed but in practice, the gyms will also save a lot of money for route setting. Further more, world or national wide competitions can he held just like already has been done with the Moonboard. In the long run, I would be surpiced if not digital led walls will be the standard in gyms.

Based on 1 000+ unique votes in regards chipping, we can see that the community is actually slightly more positive compared to an identical poll four years ago. 10 % YES! = Better climbing (7 % in 2014) 10 % OK, but very seldom (9 %) 02 % I do not know (2 %) 58 % No, but cleaning is OK (54 %) 19 % NO! Brush is the limit (28 %)

Angie Scarth-Johnson has taken two months off from her school in Australia to visit Spain like last year. This week she has onsighted Sense friccio 8a in Margalef and a 7c+. In the Gender and Age ranking game, the 13 year old is #11 but with one more 8a onsight she is #3. On the picture by Joao Giacchin, we see her non-climbing mum and dad who have been travelling around the globe with her for some years now. The first long trip to Spain they did in 2014, when she did her first 8b being 9 years old. This is what her mother, who is a teacher and do home schooling with Angie, told us then, "We believe that the experience of learning while traveling is very valuable for Angie and hopefully opening her perspective on the world."