Dylan Barks has done his first 9a, Southern Smoke Direct in Red River Gorge. The 22 year old has previously done three 8c+, out of which the last one when he was 18 years old. Then he had some health issues and climbed of and on until he took one year off. His come back started one year ago. (c) Dru Mack "Southern Smoke Direct was a route that I tried 4 years ago and wasn’t able to put together. I came back this week and managed to climb through the bottom v12 boulder pretty quickly, but heartbreakingly fell on the very last move. I took a rest day and returned to the route on a beautiful, crisp and cold day. I hopped on the route expecting to fall on the bottom boulder at least a few times, yet somehow I executed the moves better than ever and found myself at the jug rest in the blink of an eye. From there I warmed up my hands as much as I could and just started climbing and trying to flow to the best of my ability. As I entered the last few moves I felt pretty confident I would be clipping the anchors on my first 9a, the hardest grade established in the Red. Grabbing the last few crimps and being able to shake out felt pretty surreal. I grabbed the last hold and pulled one more move to the rest jug and couldn’t believe I had just done a rock climb I’ve dreamed about climbing for years. Doing this route meant a lot to me, and I am extremely excited to continue improving and pushing my limits as a climber. As a side note, I did another dream route today with Pure Imagination 8c+.

Stefano Ghisolfi has repeated Adam Ondra's recent One Slap 9b in Laghel which is a direct start to Ghisolfi's One Punch 9a+. In the Lead World Cup 2017, the Italian was #2. (c) Matteo Pavana "Queen Line into One Punch, my third 9b and second of the year! Probably one of the hardest route I've ever climbed, but still very far from my limit!"

8a has suggested a new bouldering format to IFSC allowing more finalists. The Norweigian Sports manager and National coach Reino Horak, hope to see 12 finalists next year on their national competitions. - 12 finalists mean that double as many get the opportunity to challenge themselves and have fun in the final. It also means a bigger interest to travel to a competition as many more will hope to be able to do two rounds. It is a waste of route setters time to just allow six guys in the final and further more, the more finalists, the greater chance for tied score and drama on the last boulder. I think all coaches and athletes would agree that more finalists would be more fun. The simple solution for increasing the # of finalists is simple to make three participants rotate on the first three boulders. After a short break, the Top-6 athletes will make it into the "super final", starting in reversed order. This means an increasing drama where everyone will exactly know what the last guy out needs to do to get the best overall score. When it comes to competition time, the rotating format, including 8 or 9 finalist, will save around 20 minutes. Also though having 12 finalist will not increase the competition time. 8a has also suggested a new point scoring system that will be presented in a few days.

Ryohei Kameyama has had an extraordinary three weeks trip to Fontainebleau where he did two 8C's The Big Island (c) Takuya Nakamura and Jour de chasse as well as three 8B+'. Interestingly, the 20 year old Japanese have done three Boulder World Cups with the best result #43! We will follow up with comments.

Emontana has put together long article including all details how the climbing grades have eveloved from 6a to 9c. At the same time Climbing has put together a list for female achievements since 1799.

Patxi Usobiaga, one of the best competition climbers in the history, has updated his scorecard and goes to #4 in the ranking game. In total the 37 year old has recorded 20 routes 9a and harder. Soon to come a follow up interview from his recent 9a+/b personal best. (c) Ignacio Sandoval Buron

Most of the best competition climbers did take one more trip to China to finish of the season. Janja Garnbret won in Lead, climbing faster than Jessica Pilz, who also topped both rounds. In bouldering, Miho Nonaka won and and Garnbret was second. Miho was also the fastest among the Combined competitors with 10.30 and Janja Garnbret did her debut with 13.60. Overall, Janja would have won the Combined if such multiplication would have been done. Among the male, Jakob Schubert got one more victory and in bouldering Jongwon Chon did also win again. When it comes to Speed, Jan Hojer was superior among the Combined guys by being #11 which also was his results in Lead. In Boulder he was #4. The best Combined male result was however achieved by Ogata Yushiyuki (19), who was #3 and #3 and #17, third last, in Speed. Complete results (c) Eddie Fowke