Black Diamond

Black Diamond Equipment, the Holladay-based American manufacturer of climbing and mountain gear founded in 1989, also produces and sponsors a string of films that reflect its technical roots. Their films here emphasize trad technique, route development, and the practical realities of pushing hard lines where protection, light, and logistics matter as much as movement.

The company’s mini-series culminates in Born From the Climbing Life: Drifter’s Escape, which follows Connor Herson’s multi-season effort on a long Squamish line that mixes V11 boulder problems, thin gear placements, and sustained crack climbing; the film foregrounds the arithmetic of linking very hard moves above marginal protection. Black Diamond Presents: The Pirates Code documents the complicated arc of equipping and attempting to free a new multi-pitch in Tuolumne’s high country, blending route development, alpine timing, and the photographic eye of Ben Ditto to show how projects are revived over years. Black Diamond Presents: Next Go For Sure with Alex Honnold is a tighter, intimate portrait of trad cragging near Lake Tahoe, privileging handheld angles of placements, jams, and on-the-rock conversation to show that high-level trad technique can be practiced in domestic settings.

Across these films viewers will find concrete depictions of gear decisions, sequence-finding on cracks and high granite, and the collaborative work that turns fixed lines into free climbs, framed by a brand with engineering and safety in its institutional DNA.