The Green Mile 5.14c

The Green Mile is a long sport pitch at Jailhouse Rock, a privately-owned crag along the Sonora Pass Highway in California, climbed as a right-hand extension of the route Flower Power. At 130 feet and 22 bolts, it is one of the longer, more sustained lines at the crag, graded 5.14c (8c+), and climbers who have worked it describe it as feeling like climbing Flower Power's difficulty twice in a row rather than facing one isolated crux.

History

Brad Johnson is credited with the first ascent, though the date was not confirmed in sources checked. The route drew wider attention in the mid-2020s when Chris Weidner, then 50 years old, spent 59 days across three climbing seasons working it with a dozen different belay partners before finally sending. He had climbed his first 5.14b a decade earlier at age 40, and called reaching 5.14c at 50 a fitting bit of timing given his pace of progress. Weidner has climbed trad since 1988 and was among the first members of one of the country's earliest climbing gyms.

On film

Chris Weidner Climbs "The Green Mile" (5.14c) at Age 50 (OFFICIAL) (2025) documents that redpoint at Jailhouse Rock, with Kelby Reyes on belay for the send. The film is framed around Weidner's own account of the effort, presenting the ascent itself rather than a broader history of the route or crag, and closes out a project that had spanned three separate seasons of attempts.