Tour De Force

Over the last five to ten year's bouldering has become recognised, as holding it's own place in our sport, no longer is it used as a means to practice moves for the larger cliffs. Due to this fact there has also been a large increase in the standards at which people are bouldering. I can remember first visiting Fontainebleau, near Paris, about eight years ago and thinking that you were God if you could tick a Font. 8a (V12). Now people are regularly flashing problems of this standard and above.
With its increased popularity new bouldering venues and new strong men and women are constantly popping up all of the time. Standards have risen to the shocking grade of Font. 8c (V15) and the grade of Font. 8a+ has been flashed by numerous people.
The aim of this article is to give you the most up to date list of the problems from around the World, from Font. 8a+ to 8c, and to give you an insight into whom are the key players on the bouldering scene.

Font. 8c - V15.

Here enters the Swiss bouldering strongman Fred Nicole, this is a name you will most definitely see a lot of throughout this article. Nicole has been travelling around the world for about the last six years ticking problems at the very highest standard.
Although it was on his home stomping ground of Cressiano that Fred added extra moves to an existing problem, already graded Font. 8b (V13), to create the twenty-two move 'Dreamtime'.
You would usually expect something of this standard to wait a few years until someone built up the necessary power to repeat it. This was not the case for Nicole's latest test-piece, Bernd Zangerl a twenty-two year old student from Austria decided to hang up his harness and to begin bouldering. After progressing through the grades Bernd found himself bailing from the last move of 'Dreamtime' in very poor conditions.
Returning at night, to ensure colder conditions, armed with headtorches, lamps and a team of spotters Bernd found himself topping out on what is the hardest boulder problem in the World.

"I spent about 24 days on Dreamtime. After four days I was able to do all moves and started to link them. For approximately 10 days the first or the last part was wet because the weather conditions in Tessino were really bad the last winter. So I practised a lot on each part, in November and December. I had a break in January and tried it again in February, another break in March and finally climbed it in April, so I spent five months on Dreamtime. But I know I can climb harder."
Bernd Zangerl 2001.

Problem Name.	Location.	Grade.	First Ascent.	Repeats.
Dreamtime	Cresciano, Switzerland	8c - V15.	Fred Nicole (CH)	Bernd Zangerl (AUT)