Gravere defies gravity: Claudia Ghisolfi, Giorgio Tomatis send L'extremacura plus 8c+

The beautiful little crag Gravere close to Turin was recently the object of desire of two strong Italian climbers, Giorgio Tomatis and Claudia Ghisolfi, who both managed to bag some fairly impressive results.Tomatis last weekend flashed Il volo del falcone 8a+ and redpointed both La cura 8b+ and L'extrema cura plus 8c+. Even more impressively, the 18-year-old flashed Extrema cura, becoming one of the few Italians (after Dino Lagni, Silvio Reffo and Stefano Ghisolfi) to send an 8c first go.

The first to flash 8c, i.e. send a route with some prior information in mind, was Austrian Kilian Fischhuber who in May 2004 flashed Tai chi at Lorünser Steinwand in Austria. In October that year Yuji Hirayama took things one stage further and became the first person in the world to onsight 8c, on White Zombie at the Baltzola cave in Spain.

Claudia Ghisolfi for her part settled a score at Gravere in repeating L'extrema cura plus. This is her second 8c+ after Noia redpointed at Andonno almost a month ago, and the 24-year-old sent the route so quickly on the 1st of June that she considers it far easier than Noia. It’s worth bearing in mind though that Ghisolfi knew the first section, L’extrema cura, extremely well as this was her first 8c in September 2019.