Karin Magog has done Tequila Sunrise 8a (7c+) in Chulilla. "Sustained start into hard to read crux. Steady head wall to a techy finish - only just made the span!" The 40 year old seems to be in her best shape ever, having done five 8a's during the last month out of which two onsight.

Magnus Midtbo has now spent some 50+ days over three years and fallen 40 times on the crux of Sharma's Neanderthal 9b in Santa Linya. The biggest obstacle has actually been wet holds and, lately, also temperature up to 25 degrees making it only possible for one evening push per day. (c) Henning Wang Previously, Magnus has done 12 9a's and harder including Ali Hulk sit start extension 9b. For 12 straight years, Magnus has been a very successful competition climber and in 2011 he was #4 in the World Championship. Please give us some insight of your big project? It starts with a 7b+ up to a no hands rest and then it is like a sustained hard 9a up to the crux. The crux is like a 7C+ boulder followed by an 8c to the top where actually Chris fell once. The problem now is that I get wet fingers and hands going into the crux. Having to stop in some of the hardest moves to dry my hands and chalk up costs a lot of energy. In addition I keep getting cuts in several of my fingers causing me to slip out of the holds I´m jumping from on the crux dyno. When I was younger it was more important for me to do routes quickly. Now I find it more interesting to push my limit to see what my body is capable of. It can be a frustrating process but I think I will grow as a climber. What is the next goal once you have done it? There will be a lot of competitions this summer and autumn. I am excited to try Jumbo Love (9b) when I am finished here. I have spent so much time in Spain so it would be nice to have a project in another place.

By clicking on Crags, you will get a list of all the Crags which have some Left-to-Right topos finished. By scrolling down, you can see which sectors have been sorted and are ready to be down loaded in your 8A topo App. The webmaster has also made it possible to quicker add sectors to all ascents and we can provide you with a special log-in to edit spelling and sectors. In order to create a topo, which takes like 10 - 15 min, log-in here with your normal 8a password. Just drag the routes up and down to create a Left-to-Right topo list.

FiveTen has presented their new extreme ultra light and soft shoe, Team VXi. It comes with their Stealth MI6 that are shaped of behind the toes creating that nice glove feeling. Being a fan of soft shoes, I must say that this one is their best ever and having used it for some months, it is actually quite durable. I have for several years been saying that we need different shoes like golfers use clubs and the Team VXi is a must in every advanced climbers bag. The only very strange thing was in fact that I had to cut off the textile at the top as it otherwise was to hard to get it on and off. However, with just the velcro, this makes the extreme 163 gram even lighter, more rad and more practical.

Christian Core invites to a Boulder Meet and Competition in Varazze 5/4. "The race consists in climbing the most possible blocks, the list of blocks will be included in the event kit or viable on the web site. Each boulder has a score . Those who reach the highest score wins. The race starts at 10:30 and ends at 16. Infoboulder and Facebook event

UIAA reports that the Nepal government reduces fees to climb Mount Everest from 25 000 USD to 11 000 USD per person. Previously it was also possible to get group discounts for seven climbers paying 10 000 USD each. Last spring, 810 climbers tried to scale Everest from the Nepalese side.

Based on 2 500 unique votes, we can see that more climbers warm up before they start to climb compared to an identical poll in 2011. Still, however, one third of the climbers start climbing directly. Warming up before climbing? 4 % (5 % in 2011)) NO: Full power directly 29 % (37) NO: Only easy climbing 15 % (19 %) Sometimes/Few minutes 18 % (17) Often/8 minutes 33 % (22) YES: At least 15 min

This is the most impressive sport climbing magazine since the Coffee Table Book - Rock Stars from 1997. Eddie Fowke has covered most WC events in 2013 and the interview line up is amazing: Neumann, Baumann, Hojer, Wurm, Megos, Markovic, Kruder, Becan, Godoffe, Mondet, Le Nevé, Webb Parsons, Kassay, Farrell, Coxsey, Leslie- Wujastyk, Barrans and Robinson. All interviews come with really great pictures taken by Eddie himself. Here is an example with the interview with Jule Wurm who just won the Hueco Rock Rodeo. Order it here and there is no adds. As a matter of a fact we liked The Circuit so much so we asked Eddie if he could team up with 8a to write some short reports from the IFSC World Cup events and more in 2014. We are very glad that Eddie is now part of the 8a team. "It is with great pleasure that I am able to announce I will be joining the team at 8a to provide Competition reports from the IFSC World Cups and more."

"The scoring system, it doesn't work so well." Jacky Godoffe, the most experienced and hired route setter in the Boulder World Cup comes clean in an interview for The Circuit. (c) Eddie Fowke "Yes I think that at the moment bouldering is more attractive with the diversity of abilities that you put in the sport but it is also very complicated to understand what happens, especially knowing who is leading the competition…" "So we need progress and I think it's one of the IFSC's goal to be better in the scoring system. I think at the moment it's not working very good." "They say, "ok give us the grade", then ask for how it is possible that a very strong climber falls on a 7A or a 6C? Yes it is possible for sure. You know for even the best climbers it is not possible to do 8B+ all day long. Some 7A's are harder than some 8A's, that's a fact so...”

Supertopo has the amazing story of Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell having done, Fitzroy traverse up to 3 405 m which has five km of ridge line and 4 000 m of vertical gain. The highest It took them four days. (c) Rolando Garibotti "It should be noted that their success was in spite of very bad conditions, with much ice and snow in the cracks and on the ridges courtesy of one of the wettest summer seasons in many years. Caldwell and Honnold wore rockshoes to climb Pilar Goretta and the north face of Aguja Poincenot but climbed everything else wearing approach shoes (!!).