Fabian Buhl highball hattrick at Bishop, USA

After his solo summer first ascent of a multi-pitch climb with difficulties up to 8c, and after the first solo winter ascent of a difficult climb up Wetterbock in Austria, Germany's Fabian Buhl has now managed to push his limits on completely different terrain, namely on highball boulder problems.

Buhl travelled to Bishop in California, USA to test himself on the notorious highballs and in just a week he sent three of the tallest, most beautiful and difficult test pieces in the entire area. After trying the moves on toprope, Buhl repeated the tall Too big to flail V10/7C+, established by Alex Honnold in 2012, and also Ambrosia, the famous 8A up the Grandpa Peabody boulder first climbed in 2009 by Kevin Jorgeson. To round it off, Buhl clinched the first repeat of Old Greg, a V11/8A highball freed by Ethan Pringle in 2016.

In truth, the 27-year-old German has a stout bordering background having climbed up to French 8C boulder, but climbing difficult moves higher and higher above the ground certainly adds some spice to his already impressive repertoire.

Fabian Buhl thanks his sponsors La Sportiva, Petzl