After the storm of major news that swept the international scene last week, which included the first winter ascent of Anubis by Dave Macloed, almost certainly Scotland's hardest winter climb, and pioneering routes on big walls in Venezuela and Mexico,  this week as been relatively quiet one in the climbing world.

Nonethless, sport climbing's man-of-the-moment Adam Ondra had a productive day at Siurana: he repeated British climber Richard Simpson's mega route A Muerte (9a) in just three redpoints (having tried the route twice before on previous occasions). For most other climbers on the planet]]>/news/737_Challenge_The_Story_Begins_2444.html2010-03-09- Former International Rugby Player to Lead ‘World First’ Expedition -

One hundred years after Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition left Cardiff to reach the South Pole, Richard Parks, a former Welsh and Barbarians rugby player, will be attempting to stand on both Poles and the highest mountains in all seven continents in a seven-month period of the same calendar year.

This is Richard's ‘World First’ 737 Challenge: 7 Summits and 3 Poles in 7 months. The difficulty of what Richard is attempting is much increased by the fact that until July last year, he had no mountaineering or polar experience. Richard’s motivation to consider such a record attempt came after he was injured playing professional rugby and was told he would never step foot on the field again. Whilst recovering]]>/news/Asgard_Project_Exclusive_2442.html2010-03-04This week, planetFear is running some exclusive coverage of one of the most unusual and spectacular climbing films ever made: The Asgard Project. The film, directed by maverick British adventure filmmaker Alastair Lee and produced by Leo Houlding, follows the epic battle of a team of top climbers attempting to free climb a route up the centre of the North Face of Mount Asgard in the Canadian Arctic, one of the world's most remote and hostile big walls.

You can watch an exclusive interview here with Alastair Lee, filmed live at the Kendal Mountain Festival, in which he discusses the unique logistical challenges of the project and how making the film has shaped his future ambitions.

The last week of February was a big one for world climbing. News of major new mixed lines and massive exotic walls collided with stories of exceptional sport climbing and bouldering achievements. Where do we start?

In Britain, the fiercest winter for a generation continues to produce exceptional first ascents. Last week it was news of a major new mixed line on Black Ladders in Snowdonia (Tora Bora (VIII, 8, 6, 4, 5), and this week it has been Scotland's turn to crank up the tempo.

Dave Macloed, always at the cutting edge of Scottish climbing both in summer and winter, manage]]>/news/Daniel_Woods_Sends_V16_2441.html2010-03-01The Game, and grading it a whopping V16, the first of such grades for the U.S., making it possibly the world's hardest boulder problem.

Daniel Woods on The Game (V16). Image - ©Rob Frost

For the past two years, Woods has been working on this boulder problem on and off between travels, which has been tried for more than a decade by some of the world's top climbers including Dave Graham, Tony Lamiche and Paul Robinson, as well as hard-bodied Colorado]]>