Significant First Ascents

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I think it's kinda impossible to separate out the environmental conditions from the difficulty. Maybe it would be 8C/+ in pristine conditions, but short of someone inventing teleportation it's never going to get climbed in those conditions so guessing a grade for those theoretical perfect conditions doesn't make sense.

Yeah it's a tricky one as there's no point grading for conditions that never exist, but how do you try and take into account both the best possible conditions and/or how rare they are/how different they are to average conditions? What if the best conditions only happen once every 10 years and/or you need to spend all winter shovelling snow off the top to get it in good nick?

IMO the grade of a thing only make sense in relation to the style in which that thing is usually done, e.g. if a route predominantly gets onsighted by people on short holiday trips and is rarely if ever sieged, it probably has a grade that reflects how hard it is to onsight on holiday in medium/ok conditions. A potential 9A boulder is generally going to be sieged by full time climbers who are prepared to invest long stretches of time into it, so maybe the grade for a 9A boulder makes sense to be more reflective of the best possible conditions you're likely to see over a season rather than over a week?
 
IMO the grade of a thing only make sense in relation to the style in which that thing is usually done
Yeah agree. I think that the most obvious place I’ve seen this was Squamish where, despite being techy slopey granite climbing a lot of the time, the grades seemed about right for summer conditions when it’s actually dry. I’m sure if you live there and can get some dryness in winter you can have some cheating connies.
 
Love the granularity of the grade breakdown too - 8A into 8A (hard) into 8B/+. That presumably means there's 3 distinguishable grades between each grade - 8A, 8A (hard), 8A/+, 8A+ (easy), 8A+? Obviously this makes perfect sense in a world where e.g. Bosi can't do Careless Torque in a session 😉
 
Love the granularity of the grade breakdown too - 8A into 8A (hard) into 8B/+. That presumably means there's 3 distinguishable grades between each grade - 8A, 8A (hard), 8A/+, 8A+ (easy), 8A+? Obviously this makes perfect sense in a world where e.g. Bosi can't do Careless Torque in a session.
8A (hard) / 8A+ (easy) coming soon to a crag near you.
 
Next we will get 8A (very hard)/+(very soft) followed by 8A (extremely hard)/+(extremely soft). The future of grading.
 
Think I heard some decimalised grading used on a podcast the other day, (8A.1 - 8A.9). I can only assume that Americans wanted to YDS up bouldering grades.
 
Looks like the type of climbing that would be very conditions dependent too. I know all hard climbing is conditions dependent, but some or are more dependentier than others
 
Another new 9a.

Does he not know the rule for proposing a new 9A? He needs to be silent about it for a period of 1-6 months, maybe dropping a green tick emoji mysteriously into his stories if he feels the need to spray. During that cooling off period he may wish to write a short philosophical treatise on the nature of individual achievement in a neoliberal capitalist society, go on a Zen Buddhist retreat and/or take up another hobby such as surfing or knitting. He also needs a very fancy professional video, which he will casually post up in between posting pictures of his sister's cats and black and white images of the rain.
 
It could be 8B+ for all we know, but what self-respecting professional climber would propose less than 9A for an FA these days? Imagine a pro putting up an 8C which took more than a few goes, they'd be a laughing stock.
 
Really enjoyed that. The slo mo footage and detailed breakdown of the crux move was fascinating. Looks like an amazing problem.
Yeah the slo mo breakdown was total geekage but pretty interesting! I also like the car interlude, and how all the BRO-ness in the early sessions faded away once he got on with it later on.
 
Barefoot Charles might have done one his font projects, though hard to tell as the vid starts half way through.
View attachment 2564
To follow up on this - Charles has shared a video on Insta of him doing it from the ground, but he injures his shoulder and drops from the mantle.

It appears to be a relatively old video as the caption also says that his shoulder is better and he's climbing without pain. Crazy!
 
Chris Sharma has announced a new 9a+ DWS Visión Quest on the Canyamel crag in Mallorca.

Seems like a chilly time of year to be falling into the sea but perhaps he's embracing middle age and the associated obligatory cold water swimming.

There are a few seconds of him attempting here:
 

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