Behind The Line: Biographie

Climbing Gold

Duct Tape Then Beer

Sports, Wilderness

4.8 • 849 Ratings

🗓️ 12 December 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 2001, Chris Sharma ushered in 5.15a when he completed Biographie after pouring years into the long standing project. Its position, aesthetic, history and heartbreaking sequences that have spit off the best climbers cemented the route into climbing’s memory. Today, we dive into Biographie with Chris, cinematographer Brett Lowell, Margo Hayes and Jonathan Siegrist to understand what makes the route so special. Watch Climbing Gold on YouTube Thanks to our sponsors The North Face Check out Summit Series at thenorthface.com Kodiak Cakes Find Kodiak products at your local grocery store, they're the ones with the bear on the box or learn more at Kodiakcakes.com LMNT Get your free LMNT Sample Pack with any purchase at www.drinklmnt.com/climbinggold. Try the new LMNT Sparkling — a bold, 16-ounce can of sparkling electrolyte water. Want Climbing Gold ad free? Subscribe at Climbing Gold: Unroped

Transcript

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0:00.0	I just opened the video that you had.
0:04.0	Chris just sending.
0:05.5	Do you remember seeing this for the first time?
0:07.7	Yeah, I mean, I actually forget what it was in, though.
0:10.1	I mean, I remember all this footage.
0:11.4	It's a dosage one, but as such, I think it was probably like the first climbing video I saw on the internet.
0:18.5	And it was just like, I think they released just a few seconds of it
0:21.1	maybe like 50 seconds of him doing the crux and it was like this old shitty dial-up connection
0:25.5	so it was like buffering and buffering and buffering because it was 2001 or whatever it was
0:30.3	yeah do you think it's still pretty cool to see it after all these years I mean it's pretty
0:34.9	great he just stuck the jug right as he asked is is he cool, as he just stuck the jug and just
0:39.2	started screaming. You're like, oh, that's so sick. Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing. What's funny is that, I mean, Chris does look kind of young in this, but he kind of looks exactly the same as he does now. It's like, Chris Sharmer, what a boss. Never ages, just keeps crushing.
0:55.3	Yeah, from dosage one.
0:56.6	Like, what a dude.
1:01.0	We've talked about biography through the years.
1:03.8	It's this route that I think comes up again and again.
1:06.8	You know, I think it's like a perfect example of a climber and a line that left an imprint on the climbing world.
1:13.9	And I think part of that reason was that the internet beamed it to us quicker than it would have happened.
1:18.7	Had it happened a few years earlier, like we didn't have to wait for magazines to come out.
1:22.6	It was like instant.
1:23.8	The news spread like wildfire.
1:26.1	We thought we tried something new today.
	...

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