Es Pontàs: The First Ascent

Seven minutes, and still the deep water solo film everything else is measured against. Chris Sharma makes the first ascent of Es Pontàs, the natural rock arch off southeastern Mallorca, in 2006: steep, technical rock up the arch, then a long, powerful dyno out over open water, no rope, no pads, and a long swim back after every fall. At 9a+ it was the hardest deep water solo done, a grade previously confined to bolted routes. Reel Rock's 2007 cut presents the first ascent footage.

This is for anyone who has seen the photograph, Sharma airborne over the Mediterranean mid-dyno, and wants the moving version. It is also for climbers who want to understand psicobloc at its purest: the falls, the swims, the repeated attempts across trips. Skip it if you want more than the essential document. Seven minutes is the ascent and little else.

What works is the dyno. It reportedly took dozens of attempts, and the film shows enough of them that the successful one lands as relief rather than triumph. The sea does the rest. What it gets wrong is context. Sharma had climbed Pontax at 8c on the same coast in 2005, and the route's few repeats since are not in the film, which could not know how rare they would be.

Black Pearl is Sharma back in Mallorca sixteen years later on a line he says could be harder. Watch Es Pontàs first. It is the origin, and the image the whole discipline still uses.