Adam Ondra and Alex Megos had an onsight focus as juniors and they have become, without injuries, the best in the world. On the other hand, we hear about more juniors getting finger injuries at the same time as they are focused on projecting hard, redpointing or competing in Bouldering. Sometimes, 8a actually do not report about remarkable redpoints by kids if it turns out that they have been projecting it for too long. In practice, it is easier for a kid to find and redpoint an 8a route where being short or having thin fingers actually helps than onsight a 7a. The problem is of course that once you have done an 8a, it may feel very disappointing to fall on a 7a onsight. For adults, you should have a wide grade pyramid based on factor three at least but for a children are at risk if the factor is below five. So have you not done five 7c+'s and onsighted five 7b's yet, you should not go for an 8a project! It should be noted that the original idea with the 8a ranking game is to count the Top-10 climbs and give good bonuses for onsights and flashes, in order to reduce the interest of just working on some few long term redpoint projects. Here is our new onsight/flash ranking. Juniors that are doing great also in this category are: Jan Vopat, Laura Rogara and Oriane Bertone.

Seeing how much effort Adam Ondra put into working on this line and the comment he has already made on the Dawn Wall, it is clear that Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgesson's FA sticks out as probably the most impressive FA in the world. Two months prior to their 19-day FA in 2015, Tommy reported at Facebook, "Oh my goodness!!! After six years I finally sent this beast of a pitch. Inspired by Keven's fight to the death near miss.This officially means all the hard individual pitches have been redpointed. I am so psyched my hands are shaking!" Clearly, any of Adam Ondra's three 9b+ FAs and Nalle Hukkataival's recent 9A FA are also at the top when it comes to vision and dedication but it can not be compared with guys spending 100+ days up on portaledges to find out that it is possible - after six years of work! On the other hand, if Adam Ondra can repeat the Dawn Wall after just two months in Yosemite and just about three months after winning the Lead World Championship and being #2 in Bouldering, the Czech will set another new standard in the history of climbing. A month ago, Adam onsighted a super steep 8c+ and two weeks ago he prepared himself for the Dawn wall by onsighting more steep Routes in Jailhouse and doing some hard Boulders in LCC. Does there exist any other sport athlete in the world that can combine explosive power with ultra endurance like the 23-year-old? (c) Pavel Blazek

Adam Ondra'nın Dawn Wall rotasına koyduğu onca çabayı ve yaptığı yorumları gördükten sonra, şunu anlamak daha da kolaylaşıyor ki Tommy Caldwell ve Kevin Jorgesson'nin ilk çıkışları dünyadaki en etkileyici ilk çıkış. 2015'deki 19 gün süren ilk çıkışlarının iki ay öncesinde Tommy Facebook hesabından şöyle yazmıştı, "Aman tanrım!!! Altı yıldan sonra sonunda bu hayvani ip boyunu çıkabildim. Keven'nın ölümüne savaşı bana ilham verdi. Bunun anlamı tüm ipboyları tek başına çıkılmış oldu. Heyecandan ölüyorum, ellerim titriyor!" Açıkçası, Adam Ondra'nın üç 9b+ İÇ'ı ve Nalle Hukkataival'nın yakınlardaki 9A İÇ'ı tepede duruyor ancak bunlar adanmışlıkta ve ilerigörüşlülükte bu çocukların 100+ günü duvarda geçirmeleri ve bu çıkışın mümkün olup olmadığını anlamaya çalışmalarıyla kıyaslanamaz- Altı yıl çalışma sonunda! Öte yandan, eğer Adam Ondra Dawn Wall'un tekrar çıkışını iki ayda ve lider dünya şampiyonasını kazandıktan ve kısakayada ikinci olduktan sonra yapabilirse tırmanış tarihine yeni bir çıta koymuş olacak. Bir ay önce, Adam inanılmaz sert hayvani bir 8c+ rotayı ilk görüşte çıktı ve iki hafta önce Jailhous' ta daha çok dik rota ilkgörüş çıkışı yaparak ve LCC'de bazı sert kısakaya çıkışları yaparak kendisini bu çıkışa hazırladı. Acaba dışarıda bir yerlerde patlayıcı kuvveti dayanıklıkla birleştirecek 23 yaşında herhangi bir sporcu var mı? (c) Pavel Blazek

The Greek coastal town of Leonidio is holding its first Climbing Festival on November 10-13 using a smart and simple tool for their open Marathon event: climbers can register in pairs, climb all day long and mark their route ascents in the Vertical-Life Climbing App on their smartphones. Points are counted automatically according to the 8a.nu ranking game. This new, digital system has already been used on different events, like Melloblocco and the Kalymnos Festival. It has proven to be helpful and fun for both event organizers and climbers. Through the app, the participants can access the festival topos and get real-time info on what others are climbing. With the Vertical-Life app and 800 routes to climb, the first major climbing festival in Leonidio promises to become an awesome event! App download: Vertical-Life. More info Leonidio Climbing Festival

Tendon has the latest update from the Dawn Wall. It seems that Adam Ondra is almost ready for going for his big push. (c) Pavel Blazek "We had two busy day on the wall, but extremely important motivating ones! At first, I tried the pitch 14, where I still had no idea about what to do in the last boulder problem. After a little session, I could finally do the moves and soon after I gave it a go, but I realized that my beta for the intro moves on the last boulderproblem did not work. It took me a lot of time, skin, frustration and swearing to finally find a satisfying sequence, but I was exhausted and my skin thrashed. I still gave it a another that night, slipped on the first boulderproblem but then continued to the anchor. Which gave me a lot of confidence that next time it should work out. Second day, I was incredibly lucky to get overcast day, so I could make a lot of work. At first, we took some pics with Heinz Zak in pitch 14 (5.14d), then went down and sent pitch 8 (5.13d) and toproped pith 7 (5.14a). After lunch, I went for pitch 11 (5.13c) and linked the whole crux sequence, then linked the whole crux in pitch 12 (5.14b). Then we went down for toprope session on pitch 10 (5.14a) which is always desperately wet in the dark, but I still made it with one hang in toprope. To finish the day, I just re-checked the moves on pitch 9 (5.13c). It seems like I need yet to work a bit more on pitches 10, 12 and 13 (5.13b) and then pitches 1-6 (only 5.12b to 5.13c range) and I would be ready to go for the push. Can't wait!!!"

Directly after topping out the Dawn Wall, Adam Ondra, continued working out pitch #14 and reports on Instagram. "Great progress on pitch 14, but unfortunately no send. Took a lot of skin to finally figure out the mystery (3rd and last boulder of the pitch), but I finally have a satisfying beta at least. On my last go, with no skin and really tired, I slipped on the first boulder, but continued straight away to the anchor. I am quite confident that next time it should work out. And next time I think it will be on the push. Photo @pavelblazek (check out his insights from the wall on his instagram too, highly recommended)

Michael Piccolruaz, who was #2 in a Boulder World Cup this spring and who has flashed two 8A+'s in 2016, has flashed Wrestling with an alligator 8B in Malatal. "I knew it would suit my stile quite well and so I whatched some videos to get the right beta. On friday after the warm up I wasn't too sure if I should try it that day because I was quite tired and my skin was quite sore. But some guys of the team were trying the boulder and got me motivated to give it a go. Eventually everything worked out perfectly how I had planed it and so I got into a kind of flow and climbed trough all the moves perfectly."

There are now 800 routes in Leonidio and the first climbing festival will take place there next weekend. As to celebrities, Sachi Amma and Angela Eiter have been invited and there will be an open marathon run by Vertical-Life. Leonidio is located 3 hours south east of Athens and 1 hour north of Kyparissi which many of the festival participants will visit in the following week.

Jakob Schubert, one of the best competition climbers in the world of the last ten years, has done the FA of Kein Licht Kein Schatten 9a in Ötztal and he reports on Facebook with a great picture from Wilhelm Heiko. "The special thing about this route is that you need to climb a 7c to get to the ledge where the route starts. It's a very beautiful spot with a great view into the valley" Now Jakob has travelled to Spain and reports, "First two days were fun and succesful, could do all the moves on 'Joe Mama' 9a+ in Oliana and 'Stoking the Fire' 9b in Santa Linya."

Although Sweden has two of the best junior competition climbers in the world, Hannes Puman and Kajsa Rosén, the Lead competition scene here is almost dead. Based on this information, the national coach, Reino Horak suggested to follow the Combined Olympic format, add a dyno competition and run the Nationals over three days. It worked just great and in total some 60 participants did over 200 starters. The dyno competition started on Saturday evening and even if everyone did know that their skin and fatigue were going just to get worse, all the big names were on the list and everybody had fun until late. Surely, the non-competitive atmosphere was created because Hannes and Kajsa were estimated to be superior and instead of focusing on the result, the competitors focused on the challenges that were offered. Lesson learnt is that the climbers are more interested in having fun with challenges than just in the result and that in the future the comps have to include both aspects. What is interesting is that Mina Markovic reports from the Sloveinan Nationals in the same way. "I finished 2nd, but was satisfied with my climb. But moreover, I am really pleased with nice environment, people, energy and sharing during comp, on training(s) and outdoor climbing day(s) after... Thank you all!