Coupl'a okes been wondering: is it possible to boulder 8A at triple digits? That is, weighing >100kg.

Has it been done?

Can it be done?

Who might do it first in SA?

Any info or opinion?

Take a ladder. And a pie for when you're half way up.



Jokes bro- that sounds like we should have some sort of award for the dude that can do that.
Good luck- let us know! (and warm up those tendons)

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I'm not here for a long time,
I'm here for a good time!

dunno if it is possible, but what i do know is i would not want to have a biff-up with that guy. now where's my pie?

@Dogleg - Are you a motivational speaker!?

@Mok - What exactly is a "biff-up"?

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At the chaaaaains boet!!

Keith,

You raise a very serious question in this world of faux downgrades. Any pretender can bolt the door on his kitchen shut and live on broccoli and steak. I mean Malc cheated his way up Hubble in the early nineties and used it to inspire a generation of hungry youths towards the hope of meagre sponsorship and living in your parent’s attic. In this vein, Dave Macleod’s admissions of getting toasted on one or two celebratory pints due to a lifestyle of privation are frankly an insult to any serious climbers or anyone who cares about the climbing ethos. Apart from all this bony, anorexic jostling, I think that the 0.1 ton 8A challenge would introduce a very useful scientific benchmark of performance. I mean, it’s very challenging to control for humidity, temperature, etc but I think at least we would have Jens of 8a.nu’s support in recalibrating the grading system with a universal standard measure. If successful, we could send the weighty individual around the country to recalibrate all routes of significance. It strikes me as most useful that we should start with someone who we could starve down to 60kgs, thereby having benchmarks and calibration through most weight categories, but we may need to settle for extrapolating from actual data for the 100kgs to 75kgs range and extrapolating thereafter.

Shaun

I believe it may be possible and know a few guys who might be close. I myself, weigh in at 84kg and have climbed a few faux 8A boulders and a couple of faux 8a+ routes, but the numbers are just a guide in any case. If you're after the triple digit FA, then go for it man, it is definitely within the realms of possibility!

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...Chalk is cheap...

all you gonna need to do is increase finger strength as this will be the big limiting factor.

Ebert Nel
i weight 62kg, if u call me anorexic ill call u fat, lack of perspective is a great blindness.

if you read comics in the 80s or had any aussie friends you would know. but here you go:

One of the bouldering guidebooks for Fonty suggests that there is a physiological threshold, depending on weight, for bouldering in particular (considering the acute strength and strain) and offers an interesting table of comparison:
It suggests a 'recommended grade' per weight category, suggesting that
- if you are climbing above the grade, you are pushing the structural limits of your body, and should proceed very carefully and your training should focus on injury prevention
- If you are climbing below your weight category, crank on and up your game

http://www.jingowobbly.com/Climbing/Climbing.html

Now of course there are all sorts of approximation going into that, but it raises a good point.

Unfortunately my copy lives in Font so I can't supply the table.

wow, cool topic, great comments.

I used to crush a little back when I weighed 68kgs, now, at 80kgs(not all fat anymore... ), i can barely do an 18... Truth be told, I'm not training for climbing anymore. Point is, I think if your body slowly gets used to it, you might be able to crank up your weight and grade if you train religiously, but boy o boy, what difference a few kgs does to ones climbing performance... But for me climbing with a few extra kgs now is like being punched in the gut for however long it takes to climb the route... still fun though!

for what its worth, i hit the scale at 94kg and bouldering anything above 6c starts to hurt, with inevitable injury if i try to push it. being born in the 70s also adds to the problem. i'm sure there's some bakkies botha type dudes out there that can pull it off, but my humble experience is that you have an exponential increase in the strain on your body above a certain weight threshold. the 10kg from 85 to 95 demands a lot more than the 10kg from 75 to 85. i don't think 8A is impossible at 100kgs, but it will probably require unusual natural strength and very robust tendons & joints. guys like willem le roux & deon hugo are fairly big okes (80+kg) that can climb hard, but i have yet to meet somebody in the 90+kg category that can climb harder than grade 27.

Apparently someone named Mark Smith is 93 kg's and has bouldered 8b+...So if he picks up 7kg... MAYBE 8a

http://8a.nu/forum/ViewForumThread.aspx?ObjectId=12147&ObjectClass=CLS_UserNewsComment&CountryCode=GLOBAL

#edit...sport climbed 8b+...not bouldered it woudl seem

After some consideration the most plausible scenarios for The Eight 'A' Point One Tonne (TEAPOT) challenge seem to be the following:

Harris sends Pendragon after a breakfast of fried cheese and an extra doughnut.

or

Alan Hills chows a box or two of doughnuts and cranks Marlboro man.

or

Maybe Dave Glass could get up some morpho problem like Deliverance. He'd need perhaps a pie for lunch to hit the 0.1T mark.

Otherwise, I'm outta ideas. (At 70kg and with a well-bridled ambition, the chances that I ever hit 100kg or 8A are remote.)

Thanks for the link Thermophage---Looks like this has been considered by others. Supercool if a South African gets there first. Into the history books and all that...

I'm considering offering a prize to speed things along.

QUICK ALAN! You're the closest! Gain some weight and then do it!!! You could even just don a weight vest. Training with 16kg isn't that far out there (I train with 14kg frequently -- Granted I get bumped down about 4 grades when I do). It's a race!!!!

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I hate this real world place... I'd be more than happy to live out there rather...

Harris is not far from the 0.1T club - whether Pendragon would yield to him again is another matter. And whether there'd be any holds left on it is yet another matter (especially after the Spider In The Roof debacle).

And Deliverance is only 7B+, so Dave'll have to work harder than that.

That said, due to a sustained diet of beer and pizza, I'm zeroing in on the 0.1T mark and could throw my hat in the ring. I've never been a fan of broccoli.

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the fresh prince of darkness

If you check out Toni lamprecht's old scorecard on 8A, you'll see that he weighs 88kg and has bouldered up to +\-8C. As a very rough guess, I'll say this is equally if not more impressive than doing 8A at 100kg. Here's big Toni: