Born From the Climbing Life: Episode 4 — Drifter's Escape, The World's Hardest Trad Climb
2025 · 27 min · Trad, Big Wall · Black Diamond
The closing episode of Black Diamond's series, and the one the other three were building toward. Drifter's Escape sits five pitches up a Squamish wall: V11 moves above an offset Z4 Camalot, 5.13 crack climbing above that, then another V11 boulder problem. In the summer of 2025, after two seasons and roughly twenty attempts, Connor Herson made the first ascent and proposed 5.15a, which would make it the hardest trad route in the world. Highpoint Productions filmed, directed, and cut it, and the arithmetic of the route does most of the dramatic work: hard bouldering, small gear, hundreds of feet of air. If you only watch one chapter of this series, watch this one, but the earlier episodes are what give the send its weight.
Review
The episode the other three were building toward, and it delivers. Drifter's Escape sits on the Stawamus Chief above Squamish: two bolts protecting a V7 boulder problem, then insecure 5.13 laybacking on gear, a heel-hook rest, and two sections around V11 above small cams, one of them a dynamic pogo move. In July 2025, after roughly twenty sessions over two summers, Connor Herson made the first ascent and proposed 5.15a.
This is for climbers who want to see what the hardest trad pitch in the world might look like, and for anyone who followed the debate about whether the two bolts on the opening boulder problem compromise the claim. The film shows the route clearly enough for you to have an opinion. Skip it if you have not seen the earlier episodes. The send lands harder with the preparation behind it.
What works is the arithmetic. Hard bouldering, small gear and hundreds of feet of air do the dramatic work, and Highpoint Productions lets them. The pogo move above the cams is the moment. What it gets wrong is the series framing: twenty-seven minutes spends a while recapping, and the route itself could use more of that time.
Hardest Trad Flash Ever, the Mammut film on Adam Ondra and Lexicon, is the other candidate for hardest trad on the site. Lexicon is about consequence. Drifter's Escape is about difficulty. Together they show two different things the word trad can mean.
