Alex Honnold soloed The Complete Scream at Fair Head, which is a 60 meter slab graded E7, having rapped down looking for loose rock. The UK E-grading is based on how dangerous it is to onsight a route combined with how difficult it is to find good trad protection. In other words, using the E-grade, which is meant for "flash" solo ascents, is not a good measurement for this ascent. Using the international scale, the pure difficulty should be around 7c. It should be noted that 8a normally does not publish solo ascents as we do not want to promote this activity. However, as most other media have already published it and many 8a visitors have asked us to include also solo ascents in our reports, we have during the last years made some exceptions when it comes to Honnold's extraordinary solos.

Climbing has published a long, great in depth interview with Adam Ondra by Chris Noble with many interesting thoughts from the #1 climber in the world of the last six years. (c) Petr Pavlicek "World Cup Lead is the ultimate fitness test, because the climbing is so continuous... And modern World Cup bouldering is now almost a parkour style... My biggest climbing strength is making strange moves like drop-knees and high heel hooks, and rocking up over my feet. I can rest in totally different positions from other climbers because my hips are quite flexible. As long as I have a high foot and I can rock up on to it, I can release the weight on my hands and recover, even if I’m holding onto really bad holds. Having flexible hips is probably my biggest strength. Raw power and campus moves are my biggest weaknesses... In terms of injury I’ve been really lucky. I’ve never had an injury for more than five to seven days... In my opinion, it’s very dangerous if your parents are also your coaches... This means training three times a day, six days a week. I do some campusing, some bouldering, and endurance training every single day... Regardless of how strong you are, the more relaxed and happy you are, the better your results will be... I find that if I eat too much meat I’m not as strong. But at the same time if I go two weeks without any meat—I also feel weak. So I eat meat once or twice a week... For sure I’m capable of climbing 9c [5.15d], and I can imagine what 10a might look like, but someone stronger and younger than me will come along, and hopefully they will succeed on a 10a."

Isabelle Faus has done the FA of Peace Frog Sit in RMNP, which is her third 8A+ FA. "Really psyched, its a classic ! Undercling POWER, the Boulder sits under the glass tower and up canyon a lil." Add the only female 8B FA, which she did last month and she is kind of superior in the FA category. In the 8a ranking game, Isabelle is #2, after Alex Puccio.

- At age 15, Shiraishi is the best female rock climber in the world. Give her time to finish high school, and she just might become the greatest climber — man or woman — of all time. Check the interview in Time.

Aris Theodoropoulos comes with the great news that there will be a KALYMNOS festival on 7-9 October and another one in LEONIDIO, located some three hours south west of Athens on 11-13 November. More info to come but we already know that, as always, there will be many celebrities, parties, slide shows and also a marathon hosted by Vertical-Life. (c) Claude Remy

Alex Megos reported on Facebook yesterday, "Sent "Northern Lights" 9a today at Kilnsey after falling off 7 times at my crux move about 2 thirds up the route." He gave it 4 tries the Wednesday before, when conditions weren't optimal. The day before he had done two 8c+'s and the day after he did another 8c+ and an 8c. How is it even possible to combine world class performances of the two extremes: maximum power doing the four moves Hubble and later turning into an endurance machine? Maybe a part of the answer is the quality of the routes, - I really have to say, those routes here at Kilnsey are world class routes. There are not many places I've been to with such amazing routes!!! (c) Daniela Ebler Interview with Alex Megos on UKC

During the last week, UKC has four times chosen to report higher grades than had been suggested. 1. Megos - Hubble 9a even if Megos compared it to an 8c+. 2. Schröter - 8B flash even if a half of the repeaters has given it 8A+ lately. 3. Barrows - The Wheel of Life 8C even if Alex said consensus was 8B+ 4. Honnold - The Complete Scream E8 even if they previously said it was E7 Some 15 years ago, 8a said that a grade inflation had started. It is natural for climbers and the media to take the higher grades as it creates better headlines. On the other side, it devalues ascents based on real grades. In general, it is on 8a where you first can read about a new lower grade which often becomes consensus in other media. Grades are the #1 criteria for the media when telling how important the ascent was and if we do not try to report correct grades, i.e. keep the low ones, the deflation will just continue. Another example of this unfavorable trend is when Rock & Ice said Mind Control was an 8c+ without mentioning that lately many thought it was an 8c.

Dai Koyamada, who has been one of the leading climbers over the last 20 years, reports on Instagram that he has put up yet another great line. "Miracle happened! Last night I did it! So glad to established this line which I found last June and dream to send. Definitely this is the one of my best FAs ever. Tentatively V14/15. Hope anyone else evaluate it. Name, it's 'NEHANNA'.

Marc Le Menestrel, one of the leading climbers in the world during the 80-ies who put up routes up to 8c, and a professor in Ethics, was invited by IFSC last year to establish and promote climbing ethics. The starting point also included a proactively thoughts in regards the Olumpic agenda for 2020. "Climbing shows a richness of values that goes well beyond most of sports. Community, Freedom, Nature, Performance, Pleasure, Friendship and many other values are strongly held by climbers. These values can be an inspiration far beyond the climbing community and support the potential for future development. If ethics is about living values, then the ethics of climbing can be proud of a very powerful and diverse set of values." Here is the full report - Climbing Ethics