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First Gear-Plugging Send of Spain’s Toughest Crack

Tom Randall made the first send of Spain’s hardest crack called La Fuerza de la Gravedad 5.14a while placing gear on lead.

The steep bolted crack is located at Vadiello in northern Spain and was first climbed by by Carlos “Citro” Logrono in 2017.

The mostly-sport climber sent the route with fixed gear in place. Which left room for Randall to lead the climb placing gear.

It’s one of Europe’s hardest limestone cracks. After the first ascent, Logrono said, “There was this move in the middle that was driving me mad,” said Logroño.

“Sometimes I could do it, other times I couldn’t. At times I could do it after just 10 tries.” Read about the first ascent here.

Randall told ukclimbing.com, “While I can’t in any way blame Citro for how he climbed the route – especially considering he is pretty much solely a sport climber – I felt that it would be nice to show other people that crack routes, if at all possible, can be done in a more traditional style.”

Randall has climbed most of the world’s hardest cracks. When asked how he started climbing, he said, “Through a small indoor competition at my school when I was about 16 or 17yrs old.

“I thought I’d be terrible at it, but surprised myself with how well I did and how much fun it was and it went from there really! I was mentored by this guy called Tom Williams who still remains to today a huge influence in my climbing and I got a lot to thank him for.”

For a list of hard and steep Canadian trad and sport climbs visit here. Click on the clip below to watch Randall on the gear-placing send.

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