Bananabreadtour Waterval Boven Part III from Ironmanfilms on Vimeo.

Dai Koyamada, who previously has done some 40 boulders 8B+ or harder, reports on Instagram that he started off 2018 by doing the FA of Gekirin 8C in Ryutosen. The 41 year old Japanese has been one of the top climbers in the world since he was #4 in a Lead World Cup in 1998.

Cathy Wagner, who previously in 2017 has recorded 51 routes 8a to 8B, has done La via de las flores R1 giving it a personal 8a+ grade. In total the 52 year old, who is at her peak, has recorded 624 8a and harder and if she would not so frequently had given personal grades, she would have been close to 700. How many female have done more than that?

Janja Garnbret, who set a new IFSC record in 2017 by winning nine World Cups, has done her first 9a, Seleccio natural in Santa Linya and the 18 year old just needed five tries. The day before she did Open your mind 8c+ meaning that the Slovenien takes the Sport Climber of the year crown from Adam Ondra who has had if for the last seven years straight. (c) Eddie Fowke

Jose Agustí has put up yet another hard route in Món Sant Miquel del Fai, El Llicenciat del Món 8c+. (c) Ivan Rocamora “The FA of El Llicenciat del Món, is a combination between the hardest of the 8b+ El Llicenciat and the 40 meters long Supermon al revés 8c/c+, resulting a monster of 50 meters long. But that is only a step on the way to my projeckt, a new 9a. When you get to the top of this new 8c+ the possible 9a adds a 25 meters 8b+/8c with the hard move at the very end in the lip of the roof and after 60 of roof climbing and almost 180 movements

Giuliano Cameroni has spotted an amazing line on a new block in Cresciano and made the FA of Great Escape 8B+. The big question is how did he move next from the crazy position on the picture? ""Amazing boulder! The crux is really intense and it consists on this crazy double-toe-hook that unlocks a great compression on perfect rock. One of the best boulders in Ticino for sure! Situated above "La Proue". Giuliano recently made many first ascents in Ticino and a video will come up soon. In the 8a ranking game, the 20 year old Swizz is #5.

Centro de Escalada Urbana was founded in 2010 and aims to use climbing as a tool to engage and mentor at-risk youth from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. It was co-founded by Andrew Lenz, a professionally certified climbing instructor with over 15 years of experience running community outreach programs in different slums around the city. The program offers free climbing classes (both indoor and outdoor) to youth from the ages 8 to 20 years old in Rocinha, the largest favela in Rio. It also has a scholarship program that supports 3 youth mentors, allowing them to stay in school and in the program rather than leaving their studies behind to work mediocre jobs in order to pay bills. These youth receive a monthly scholarships and in exchange are responsible for finishing their high school studies, opening and managing the indoor climbing wall in Rocinha 3 times a week, studying English at a course the program enrolled them in, competing in local climbing competitions, as well as climbing outdoors once a week with the goal of working towards getting their professional guiding certification. Today the program counts on the support of the local climbing community for volunteer work and on the international climbing community for gear and monetary donations. The program has a monthly cost of about 1200 Euros per month to cover the rent of the community space that houses the wall, the three scholarships and small operational costs (for those that think this is high, its good to remember that, although Rio has wide spread poverty and social inequality, its still one of the most expensive cities in the Americas). In the beginning, the program was mostly just Andrew taking a small group of about 4 -5 kids out to climb on the 200 meter cliffs that tower over the Rocinha slum. During the first few years the greatest challenge was logistical, managing to get the youth together, travel around the city and safely teach them on the multi-pitch routes that Rio has most off, all with limited resources and volunteers. The number of students attending the program never surpassed 8-10. But in 2015, through the support of a few international organizations such as Beyond Gear (USA) and Urban Uprising (UK) he was able to put together enough funds to rent a space inside the slum and build a small bouldering wall. This immediately helped double the size the group of youth the program was were able to work with as well as the sort of attention they are able to give them. C.E.U. still depends on volunteer instructors though, which makes it difficult to maintain consistent outing and focused training. Today they still teach outdoor climbing, but have widely expanded their indoor program. The state wide junior boulder championship was won by one of students. We have another student climbing as hard as 7c on single pitch routes and V10 boulder problems, and still another that is specializing in multi pitch trad routes. 2018 has a lot of potential for C.E.U. They want to double the size of group, working with up to 40 youth, including a program just for young women climbers. We want to bring in more professional instructors (our dream would be able to offer paid positions, ensuring quality and consistency) and are also hoping to expand on many parallel cultural and environmental activities that can be offered to our youth. It could be a difficult year though if the program doesn’t manage to raise enough funds to at least pay their monthly costs. At this point they are guaranteed to operate until May of 2018. More info and here you can support them with cash.

Chris Sharma put up Era Vella in 2010 and he actually did it as his warming up and thought it was a soft 9a. The super nice route very quickly became the most repeated 9a and during 2015 it was repeated seven times. At the same time, some climbers that wanted to stay anonymous said it was 8c+ and we forward this message also saying that the statistics suggested it might be too soft to be 9a. In the 8a forum several climbers did complain that we commented on the grade and we answered that we just want to give as accurate news as possible. During 2015, Jonathan Siegrist and Magnus Midtbö were the first two who officially come forward saying it is not 9a. What is very interesting is since the grade discussion two years ago, Era Vella has only been repeated once in 2016 and once in 2017. In other words, climbing grades are very important when top climbers choose which project to take down. In the 8a data base, all 14 that have star rated it, have given it 3 stars and some have said it is one of the best route ever. The brutal fact is, in other words, that the quality is less important in comparison to how soft or hard graded the route is. Climbers should focus on the beauty of the climbs and "never mind all that (grades)", as Jonathan Siegrist so nicely hint in is blog and leave the grade to the media who want to report as correct news (grades) as possible. On the picture is Magnus Midtbö. It should be mentioned that 8a several times, based on anonymous comments and statistics, has forwarded down grading speculations and as a matter of fact, later the climb or actually whole areas have been down graded; Ticino, Rocklands, Lleida and Kalymnos are examples of this.

Here is a quick draft for Climber of 2017. As all previous years, we give more credit to the ones doing many ascents in different disciplines. Please comment to update the list. 1. Janja Garnbret 2. Adam Ondra 3. Alex Megos 4. Stefano Ghisolfi 5. Alex Puccio 6. Anak Verhoeven 7. Jan Hojer 8. Angela Eiter 9. Margo Hayes 10. Alexey Rubtsov, Tomoa Narasaki, James Webb, Shauna Coxsey, Ashima Shiraishi, Jongwon Chon, Mikaela Kiersch, Jernej Kruder, Jakob Schubert, Romain Desgranges, Laura Rogara, Keita Watabe, Christof Rauch, Akiyo Noguchi, Stasa Gejo, Moho Nonaka, Jain Kim, Nalle Hukkataival, Charles Alber, Kokoro Fujii, Claire Buhrfeind, Domen Skofic, Mina Markovic, Jonathan Siegrist, Jessica Pilz, Julia Chanouride, Molly Thompson-Smith, Keiichiro Korenaga, Chris Sharma, Ryuichi Murai, Alberto Rocasolano, Piotr Schab, Paul Robinson, Jorge Diaz-Rullo, Daisuke Ichimiya, Dai Koyamada, Lara Neumeier, Karoline Sinnhuber, Nina Williams, Katherine Choong, Jorg Verhoeven, Steve McClure, David Graham, Daniel Woods, Anna Stöhr, Sasha Digiulian, Dani Andrada, Nina Caprez, Sean McColl, Melissa Le Neve, Ramon Julian Puigblanque, Giuliano Cameroni, Seb Bouin, Steve McClure, Gabri Moroni, Mathieu Bouyoud, Patxi Usobiaga, David Firnenburg, Toby Saxton, Daniel Fuertes, Ned Feehally