Black Diamond Presents: The Pirates Code
2025 · 17 min · Trad, Alpine, Documentary · Black Diamond
Filmmaker and photographer Ben Ditto and pro climber Mason Earle return to a line they first equipped in Tuolumne’s high country in 2012. The film follows the original project — a newly equipped multi-pitch line on Tuolumne granite — and the way attempts to free that line were interrupted when Earle’s life took an unexpected turn. With Connor Herson later joining the effort, the film traces how the project was revived and the practical, emotional work of trying to turn a bolted/placed route into a free ascent. The Pirates Code is as much about the mechanics of developing a new line and the photographic framing of alpine granite as it is about individual performances. Ditto’s background in climbing photography shapes the film’s attention to light, approach, and gear, while the climbing sequences document route-finding and protection on high-country granite. For viewers interested in route development, long-term projects, and the collaborative side of hard alpine/trad climbing, the film records concrete moments of problem-solving and return-to-project dynamics rather than spectacle.
Review
A film about developing a line, and about what happens to a project when a life gets interrupted. Ben Ditto and Mason Earle return to a route they equipped in Tuolumne's high country in 2012, and the attempts to free it were derailed when Earle's life took an unexpected turn. Connor Herson later joins, and the film follows the project's revival.
This is for climbers who care about route development, long-term projects and the collaborative side of hard alpine granite. It is also for anyone who likes Ditto's photography, because his eye for light, approach and gear shapes the whole film. Skip it if you want a send. The film is about problem solving and returning, not a summit.
What works is the interruption. Earle's turn is handled with care, and the film makes the return to the line feel like the point rather than a comeback narrative. Herson as the fresh pair of hands is the right addition. What it gets wrong is that seventeen minutes is not enough for a project that spans over a decade, and the line itself stays hard to picture.
Attempting to Free Climb a Patagonian Bigwall is Earle fifteen years earlier, cutting his own expedition film in 2010. Watch that and then this, and you get a climber's whole arc in under an hour, told from inside the friendships that made it.
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