UKC

Will Bosi flashes Graceland, 8B+

© Will Bosi

Will Bosi has flashed yet another 8B+ boulder problem, Graceland, in Allgäu, Germany.

Reporting the news on instagram, Will gave the boulder a personal grade of '8B(+)'.

Speaking to 8a.nu, Will described the boulder as revolving around a 'weird shoulder move', and said that he wasn't expecting to climb at all due to the poor weather, so hadn't brought any pads. Fortunately he found that Graceland was dry and had two pads stashed beneath it. After calling local climber Dominik Bösch in to show him the beta, Will pulled on and flashed Graceland with his very first climb on German rock.

This is the third Font 8B+ boulder problem that Will has flashed. Last April, he flashed Charizard 8B+, before flashing The Dagger (f8B+), which Will again gave a personal grade of '8B(+)', in early December.

Will's flash of the Dagger was already unprecented, in that it made him the first climber to have flashed two 8B+ boulders in the space of a calendar year. His flash of Graceland adds yet another record to the list, making him the first climber to have flashed three 8B+ boulders in a twelve month period.

With Will's 8B+ flashes having been a regular feature on UKC recently, it's worth noting just how uncommon they actually are. No climber has flashed a harder boulder, and only seven other climbers have flashed 8B+, Daniel Woods, Jimmy Webb, Adam Ondra, Ned Feehally, Florian Wientjes, Tomoa Narasaki, and Jakob Schubert.

Of this short list, containing many of the best boulderers of the past decade, only Jakob Schubert has as many 8B+ flashes as Will, with Catalan witness the fitness (f8B+), Never Ending Story (f8B+), and Anam Cara (f8B+).

The last year has seen Will firmly establish himself as one of the leading forces in a number of different aspects of bouldering, with hard first ascents of boulders such as Honeybadger 8C+, hard repeats of boulders like Alphane (f9A) and Ephyra (f8C+), and, of couse, top end boulder flashes too.

As if that isn't impressive enough, Will's sights remain set on Stefano Ghisolfi's recent 9b+ Excalibur, which he is hoping to return to in the coming weeks.


This post has been read 5,411 times

Return to Latest News


Edinburgh born Will Bosi is one of the world's top climbers. At just 17 years of age, Will became the youngest Brit to have climbed 9a with his repeat of Rainshadow at Malham Cove. In 2018 he became first British male...

Will's Athlete Page 61 posts 33 videos



Loading Notifications...
Facebook Twitter Copy Email