Es Pontas

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In September, 2006, Sharma completed his most difficult project since Realization, a deep-water solo beneath a 65-foot arch-shaped rock islet called Es Pontas, off the coast of Mallorca, Spain. The crux of the route features a difficult dynamic move, leaping from one set of holds to the next while 35 feet above the water, which apparently took Sharma 50 or more attempts to successfully complete. The route tentatively holds the same name as the islet. It is not yet graded, though the popular climbing website www.8a.nu has suggested 9b.

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Slovenian climber Jernej Kruder has made the second ascent of Chris Sharma’s famous “King Line” Es Pontas in Mallorca, Spain. He had projected the deep-water-solo route for almost a month before finally taking it to the top today.

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I'll just stick with Chris' words. This thing is so specific. For sure it's about 9th grade, but there are so many different factors. Like the dyno. If there are 200 people in the World climbing 9a, maybe just 10% of them can do it. Then there is the fear factor. The mind battle of trying it all over again without knowing if you're able to do all the moves or not. So at the moment I don't feel like a Superman who's able to climb all the hardest climbs in the World, but I feel lucky to have all of the skills that you need for this route. Maybe I'm just one of few chosen guys, who can actually climb this thing. I give a huge respect to Chris. It must have been so rad for him to realize that this thing is even possible. Spending 100 tries to catch the dyno, without knowing if the rest is possible?? That's also why I also don't want to talk about the grade. This route is one of the hardest routes in the World! And for sure not because of the hard moves...but getting all together.

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I think in total I must have tried it for like six or seven weeks, probably 30 days climbing on it. Maybe four times a day, so easily over 100 tries. It’s really hard to tell. I think Chris and Jernej agreed on something around 9a+ [5.15a]. It’s hard to separate the difficulty of the route from how hard it is to try. I guess I’d call it 9a+, but I don’t know… it’s so much easier to work a 9a+ on a rope.

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