FIRST ASCENT on America’s Highest Big Wall (14,255')

Seven minutes for four summers, and the film makes the arithmetic land. Chris Weidner and Bruce Miller establish Gambler's Fallacy, nine pitches at 5.13b on the Diamond of Longs Peak at 14,255 feet, after 51 days on the wall across four seasons. Weidner led the final redpoint on August 9, 2020, with Miller belaying and hauling in support.

This is for climbers interested in sustained first-ascent work at altitude: hauling, bivvying on a 14,000-foot wall, and threading a free line through old aid seams with nine new protection bolts. Jon Glassberg directs and Michael Wideburg scores it. Skip it if you want the whole route. Seven minutes cannot show nine pitches, and the two new finishing pitches at 5.13a and 5.12d are summarized.

What works is the name. The film explains it: Diamond routes are named for card games, and the two of them had come to believe that years of failure made success more likely, which is the fallacy. That is a better line than most features manage. What it gets wrong is Miller. He climbed in support throughout and the film frames the ascent as Weidner's.

Push the Lines is the same wall in winter, with Matt Segal, Jesse Huey and Quentin Roberts on a mixed line. That film is about cold. This one is about thin air and patience, and it says more in seven minutes than the other does in twenty-seven.