[dave k]

Anak Verhoeven was new to me a while back. She has a highly impressive ticklist, but is definitely not a mainstream pro.

[Duma]

Not sure what you mean by not a mainstream pro? Anyone who only recently heard of Anak definitely hasn't been paying attention.

[cheque]

Who are the true mainstream pros? Bonington obv, probably Honnold, “that French bloke who climbs skyscrapers”, who else? Fred Dibnah’s probably in with a shout for fourth place.

[jwi]

Anak Verhoeven was new to me a while back. She has a highly impressive ticklist, but is definitely not a mainstream pro.

yeah? She's been on the podium in world cups! How could you get a higher profile than that?

She's also in movies and has an instagram and publisize all her hard ascents?

Who are the true mainstream pros? Bonington obv, probably Honnold, “that French bloke who climbs skyscrapers”, who else? Fred Dibnah’s probably in with a shout for fourth place.

Country-dependent, I'd say.

There are climbers who are well-known sports personalities in their home countries.

My father could probably name one professional rock climber, and it is not Robert or Honnhold.

[abarro81]

What Duma and jwi said.

Jwi - yup, that's the Amos. Low-key old school dirtbagging, cycling venue to venue, living in the forest and still doing more 9as in a year than any Brit other than Tom B has done in their lifetime...

[Kingy]

Just having a flick through https://www.8a.nu/ascents/global at ascents of 9a+ and above, there's a lot of names on there many of whom I don't recognise. I doubt there are many 9a+ ascents that are totally unknown about, but given they're not typically newsworthy I'd imagine there are a lot you wouldn't hear about unless you knew where to look and/or who to ask.

Sure, it depends on the level of cataloguing going on I guess. I think I'm not mistaken in stating that pretty much every 9a+ ascent done worldwide is reported on 8a.nu. So, I'm not sure what you mean by not typically newsworthy? Its all documented somewhere on t'internet. To save the spadework of looking, these guys seem to be doing a pretty thorough job of cataloguing 9a+ ticks https://4sport.ua/articles?id=32218 so I don't think there are many that would slip through being relentlessly documented. There's even a line graph tracking their steady rise from 1995 to 2024.

[abarro81]

I think I'm not mistaken in stating that pretty much every 9a+ ascent done worldwide is reported on 8a.nu.

I'd wager that you are mistaken, but I could definitely be wrong. You could cross reference the 8a database against the news, I don't think all those ascents made news.. and then there's the ascents from people with no logbook... And then people with no logbook and no insta! I would guess that a majority are documented but not pretty much all...

[Kingy]

I think we need some research done into under-reporting of 9a+ ascents in rock climbing. I'm too busy for this assignment right now.... 

[jwi]

I'm with abarro81.  I would be surprised if there were any unreported 9bs though, those are still a few years away I suspect.

[cheque]

[thunderbeest]

Maybe we should just have a poll here: who heard about Sindre Sæther his ascent of Chilam Balam? Speaking if undercover climbers.

[Kingy]

In the immortal words of Donald Rumsfeld:

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."

[jwi]

Maybe we should just have a poll here: who heard about Sindre Sæther his ascent of Chilam Balam? Speaking if undercover climbers.

Again, that is just not paying attention. The ascent was written up in grimper, desnivel, fanatic climbing, wogu, 8a.nu, norsk-klatring, can be found on remus's site, on escalade9 and hardclimbs.info etc... so not exactly an unpublished ascent...

[thunderbeest]

True about Chilam, but try to put together a list of his hard ascents and it becomes a lot harder.

[remus]

Japanese comp wad Kokoro Fuji has flashed a problem called Utsushiyo 8B+ in Ena, Japan. One of only 12 people who've flashed 8B+ or harder.

From a quick bit of research it looks like he may never have climbed harder than 8B+ outside?!

[Duma]

Emma Twyford onsighted Doctor Feelgood (8a) today. From her IG story.

[thunderbeest]

Honest question: is on sighting 8a for women still significant?

[Duma]

Pretty sure it is for British women. Maybe not internationally?

[jwi]

Internationally it is around 8b/b+. But I'm not aware of any hobbyist/non-pro women who onsights 8b on rock actually, so I feel that 8b should also be reported. I see 8a onsights by female amateur climber at the crags now and then, but I feel that it is not very common? Around 10-20 in Europe per month? About the tripple if you add in pros?

[ferret]

The Uk’s full of weird short 8as covered in nothing but minging sidepull crimps, so onsighting them is probably still significant

[remus]

Honest question: is on sighting 8a for women still significant?

In the context of British women I think so. The list is 8a and above redpoints and there's less than 200 names on there, so an onsight at 8a is impressive imo.

https://climbing-history.org/list/2/strong-british-female-sport-climbers

[andy moles]

Honest question: is on sighting 8a for women still significant?

Define 'significant'.

[dunnyg]

 Significant enough to be worth posting on this thread.

[ali k]

Maybe not ‘significant’ in terms of first of its type or anything, but still impressive for UK women. Internationally 8b+/c onsight looks to be about the level where it might be defined as ‘significant’ to the same degree.

[andy moles]

Significant enough to be worth posting on this thread.

So significant enough to be of interest to at least a few people reading this thread?