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 (!!).

Gabri Moroni has done the seventh ascent of Dave Graham's classic "The Story of 2 Worlds", 8C in Cresciano. FA was made in 2005 and the name was referred as a statement towards previous grade inflation. Wow! Another crazy moment in my climbing life! Did it with the original Dave's start. Tried on and off for like 5 days in the last two months after I climbed The Dagger(3days to do it). But weather and other obligations didn't allow me to try it for the last 3weeks... Today was supposed to be another working-day on the problem but on my last try from the start I eventually got into The Dagger with enough power left and managed to fight till the top of the boulder!" Gabri is a succesfull competition climber, he won tha Youth World Championship in 2002 and he was #3 at the Bouldering World Championship in 2004, being only 16 years old. He stopped his competition career in 2011. Dai Koyamada did the first repeat in 2010 but the ascent was questioned since he did a slighty easier start than the original. Dai was back on the problem lately doing a spectacular lay downstart for which he claimed 8C+.

The Youth World Championship in New Caledonia was originally planned to August 15-18. Two weeks ago, IFSC announced date changes to September 20-24 meaning that most juniors would have to take 1.5 weeks leave from school. In a debate article, I questioned this and said that they should keep the original dates, as there otherwise is a risk that many youngsters will skip the championship. Alternatively, I suggested to change the starting date of the event to a Tuesday, instead of the current Saturday, as this would mean only five days leave from school. Several youth competitors and coaches have made complaints and the latest news from IFSC is that the original dates in August and "(date may change after PA 14 vote.)... The event will be considered for September upon decision of the Plenary Assembly. The Youth Coaches have now received an email with another new dates to 19-23 September and that IFSC want to know how many each country plan to send based on arriving five days prior to the event.

Daniel Jung, who previously has done eight 9a's, has done his first 9a+, La Rambla in Siurana. (c) Bernando Gimenez From his blog we can understand that it was a long exciting project including swollen fingers, skin problems and wet holds etc. His next project is to finish a new boulder gym in Siegen with his brother Markus. La Rambla is one of the most famous hard core routes in the world and the 8c+ FA was done by Alex Huber in 1994. In 2003, Ramonet added the 9a+ extension making the route 40+ meters. It is with 10 ascents, the most repeated 9a+ in the world.