Chris Sharma Talks About Hard Deep Water Soloing
Sharma recounts the adventure and dedication required to establish his hardest DWS yet
Photo by: Matty Hong
“I started trying it back in 2017 after climbing Big Fish. I was always looking for that next thing, trying to step it up a notch,” Chris Sharma tells me about his most difficult deep water solo to date.
He’s talking about Black Pearl, a 100-foot overhanging line of small, sloping edges with one distinct pocket. It’s also the focus of an accompanying video sponsored by Tenaya (distributed by Trango in North America) that will soon premiere on Reel Rock Unlimited.
The route is located in Sóller, Mallorca, just an hour-and-a-half flight from his home in northern Spain. The video premiered at the Siurana Climbing Festival in Spain on Nov. 16 to a full house, and clips of it have gone viral since, reaching millions of views on social media in the past week.
“That clip between Reel Rock and Tenaya—it’s gotten millions of views. It’s crazy. The algorithms kicked in somehow,” Sharma says.
We talked over WhatsApp from his home in Garraf, a small town near Barcelona. Sharma explained how his proximity to the airport allowed him to make day trips to Mallorca—dropping his kids off at school in the morning, flying to work on Black Pearl all day, and returning that same evening to tuck his kids into bed.
The conversation feels like catching up with an old friend. I’ve known Chris (43) since we were teenagers—we first crossed paths at Northern California comps, later bouldered in Camp 4, and spent time in Bishop.
Before diving into Black Pearl, he asked about my life and whether I was still climbing. I told him that all I do is climb, bike, and write, which he understood. “It’s tricky, man,” he says. “I feel really grateful I’ve been able to find a balance to climb, keep projects alive, and manage family life. It’s not always easy.”
It’s 6 p.m. his time, and as his wife and kids (6 and 8) watch X-Men in the background, Chris begins recounting the story of Black Pearl in detail.
Black Pearl
Black Pearl is on the rugged west coastline near Sóller in Spain’s Balearic Islands. Unlike other deep-water solos, Chris says, “The wall itself was smooth and featureless in so many sections, making it feel unlikely that a route like this could even exist.”
“I spotted this blank, gray wall with a perfect three-finger pocket, and it just sparked my imagination. It seemed almost impossible at first. But that pocket in the middle of the wall—it was so distinct, so perfectly shaped—it felt like it didn’t belong there, but that’s what made it magical. It’s the kind of thing you dream about finding as a climber. But that one hold—the pocket—gave me the vision to piece together the sequence.”
In an article on Climbing.com, Delaney Miller describes the line’s breakdown: it starts with a 5.13 section leading to a rest, followed by a 15-move crux capped with a dyno to the three-finger pocket. The crux itself clocks in at 5.14c with a V9 boulder problem. From there, it continues with 5.13b/c, climbing to the top, finishing at 100 feet.
Sharma sent the route on Nov. 7, 2023. But social media viewers are eager to see more now that short clips are showing online and the video coming out soon.
I couldn’t stop watching the above clip on repeat as Sharma and I talked—it was mesmerizing.
On Miguel Riera’s Fall
Two years after Chris first visited the cave holding Black Pearl, tragedy struck while climbing there in 2019. Sharma was with his friend and mentor Miguel Riera, a Mallorcan climber widely credited as the founder of deep water soloing.
“Miguel—he’s the founder of deep water soloing, right?” Sharma says. “He’s a Mallorcan climber who started doing that in 1978, like one of my best friends.”
Riera showed Sharma the cave right after Sharma climbed Es Pontas. At the time, Riera had envisioned a crack project nearby but had lost his motivation for climbing in recent years. “But he got fired up again and was trying this crack that he had envisioned years ago. It was really cool because we had these routes that we were trying together in the same place,” Sharma says.
But that afternoon in 2019 didn’t go as planned. “The conditions are really complicated when you’re climbing right by the sea. The humidity and wind direction can coat the wall with moisture, making it impossible to climb.
“There were many times I went to try it and got completely shut down because of the weather—it was maddening.”
That day, Riera fell 45 feet onto his back while working on the crack project.
“He was coughing up some blood, which is normal for a fall like that,” Chris says, “but it turned out he had lung cancer that was somehow triggered or activated.
“It was a crazy and tragic turn of events. After that fall, he got sick 10 days later, and within a month, discovered he had lung cancer. He passed away just two months after that.
“We had shared this place, and he regretted not sending his route. I felt this commitment to see through what we both started together,” Chris says.
Balancing Family & Climbing
“As much as I’d love to do more climbing elsewhere, it becomes very challenging. Projects away from home require me to be gone for a long time, which complicates family life,” Sharma says.
“I’ve worked out a routine integrating day trips into my family setup. I can drop my kids at school, fly to Mallorca, climb all day, and be back to kiss them goodnight. Consistency is so important. If you let a project go cold, it’s hard to get back into it. You have to keep the momentum going,” he says. Sharma likens it to “striking the hammer while the iron is hot. You need to keep it alive and hot because when you lose the rhythm, things unravel.”
He notes the challenges and rewards of this balancing act, saying, “I feel really grateful I’ve been able to find a balance to climb, keep projects alive, and manage family life.
It’s not always easy.” He adds, “I want to be present for my kids and don’t want to be away for months on end, so I focus on projects close to home.”
Making the Video
Sharma notes the Black Pearl video’s departure from modern climbing films. “I feel like climbing films are so much about the story these days, which is cool, but this piece was pretty much, like, core climbing. It’s more about just getting into the nitty-gritty of going rock climbing.
“We didn’t try to overthink it or add layers of storytelling—it’s just raw climbing, which I think resonates differently. It’s refreshing to focus on the movement and the climb itself without too much additional context.”
Capturing the send was no easy feat. “With sport climbing or other types of route climbing, you can go back and reshoot stuff, but with deep water soloing, you can’t. You really need to capture it when I’m close to sending it,” he says. “I can’t just go back and pose down the climb. You can’t clip bolts or anything—it doesn’t work like that.”
“It was really cool that I was able to capture the first ascent of Black Pearl with Brett Lowell [of Big Up Productions/Reel Rock]. He’s my old buddy from forever, and he’s documented so many of my first ascents. He came in so we could capture this one.”
“It’s crazy to see something I did out in the middle of nowhere suddenly being received by that many people,” Sharma says of the viral success of the video.
“With every new first ascent, I feel like I’m adding to a collection of epic routes—a legacy of sorts,” he says.
“I try to do a rad FA every year, you know. Like, I don’t need to do a bunch of them, but it’s like, I want to do one that feels meaningful and keeps that momentum going.”
Stay tuned for his next epic deep water solo first ascent.
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