Caroline Ciavaldini reports from her trip together with James Pearson to the Philippines where they found a new DWS eldorado, Check their map with pictures. On the picture, James is doing a E8 trad ascent above shallow water. "Everything began with a simple Google search for “Sea Cliffs, Asia”. I stumbled onto several beautiful photos around the island of Palawan, and after many emails and a lot of research, I was sure that nobody had been deep water soloing there before. The amount of rock around El Nido is impressive. There are more islands than you can count, and each one is surrounded by cliffs that fall directly into a turquoise sea. A lot of the rock is black and sharp and no good for climbing; sculpted into daggers over millions of years by the sea and the rain. However the more you tour around the islands, the more you discover perfect walls for DWS – Steep and solid rock, covered in pockets and tufas, and most importantly, directly above deep crystal clear water.

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Silvio Reffo who previously has done three 9a's has done the FA of The ring of life 9a (+) in Covolo. " I took me maybe 12 days, 7 last year not being even close. This year after some months of hard training I was be able to do the route after 4 days of tries. The first part of the route is very bouldery 8c+/9a and I needed lot of body power to do that... This was the key for the success." The next plan is to open some more hard projects on nearby crags and also to do some multi-pitches. "Near Arco there is a beautiful wall with lot of MPs. I'd like to do 3 hard routes in the same day, 25 pitches with more or less 15 of them more of 8a or harder. One of them is an open project; Viaggio su Plutone, I think 8b+/c max.

Based on the votes from 1 000 unique 8a visitors, here is the ranking of - What do you like the most with climbing? (several clicks available). It is kind of surprising to see the results for 8a.nu surfing compared to Reading magazines :) 16 % Complete Projects 14 % Road trips 11 % Beautiful settings 10 % Onsight/Flash, New Climbs 07 % Finding optimizing beta 06 % Making FA, Train indoors 05 % Team spirit, Watching videos 03 % 8a.nu surfing 02 % Watch a competition, See a celebrity climb, Compete 01 % Reading magazines

Daniel Fuertes has done his 4th 9a, Fabela pa la enmienda in Santa Linya. The previous three weeks, he has done one 8c+ and two 8c's including one personal grade. (c) Manabu Yoneyama

Dani Moreno has had an amazing weekend in Alquezar where he did two 8c+ (9a), including both a personal up- and down grade; Priorato de Sion and Monster. Daniel did his first 8c+ in 2006 and in total he has done seven 8c+ and three 9a.

Thomas Caleyron took a sensational victory in the CWIF Bouldering comp in Sheffield by onsighting all four final problems. Last year Thomas was #9 in the Boulder WC. Alexander Megos was #2 and Gabri Moroni #3. Complete results Among the female, no surprises on the podium. #1 Shauna Coxsey, #2 Mina Markovic and #3 Mina Leslie-Wujastyk.

Alex Puccio has had a great start of her trip to Ticino by doing really quick two 8A's and Walk the Line 8A+ in Chironico. "Took an hour or so. really fun climb and a little scary at the end. :)" Alex, who has only missed being Top-10 once out of 27 Boulder World Cups, has previously done 15 8A+ and 40 8A's. On the picture she is working the moves on Shadowfax 8B. Interesting interview by Cruxcrush.