This New Technology Could Put a 3D Map on Bow Valley Climbing Routes

A University of Calgary master’s student has developed a working prototype that overlays a 3D map directly onto the cliff face for two climbing routes on Mount Yamnuska.

But a longtime climbing advocate says the technology will likely run into a familiar problem in the climbing world: a lack of trustworthy, up-to-date information.

Ben Pearman, a Master of Computer Science student and longtime Bow Valley climber, has developed RockXR, an augmented reality (AR) navigation and planning app for the Apple Vision Pro headset.

It follows ThreeTopo, a previous phone app project that similarly helped with route planning and navigation but came with an obvious challenge: climbers had to look at their phones while holding onto the rock.

“I imagine this beautiful future where every route is always up to date... whenever a bolt comes out, it is known in this digital shadow that anyone can go and look at, or when a route is under development, you can go and see that,” Pearman said.

ThreeTopo is already available as a free download, though it currently maps only one route: the classic Red Shirt on Yamnuska. The project won best paper this spring at ACM CHI, a major computer science conference, where Pearman presented it in Barcelona.

RockXR takes the idea further.

Pearman said the app is built around three modes designed to help climbers at different stages, from planning a climb to navigating while on the wall.

He used a drone to scan the cliff and photogrammetry software to turn images captured from multiple angles into a 3D model, which forms the basis for all three modes.

World in Miniature allows climbers to study a route ahead of time or check a 3D map of their position mid-climb.

Immersive Guidance overlays a route line directly onto the rock through the headset’s AR display, highlighting key decision points as the climber moves.

Chat Assistance drops the visuals entirely. Climbers can ask an AI, built using the same route data, questions such as how far away the next bolt is, similar to asking a more experienced climbing partner.

“I don't view it as being subtractive from the sport. I think, at the end of the day, you don't have to use any of this stuff... but it's additive, because it enables new types of challenges,” Pearman said.

Some of the possibilities Pearman envisions go beyond planning and navigation.

One could be a ghost version of a friend who previously climbed the same route that a climber could follow up the wall. Climbers could also see how others completed a route or use markers to identify exactly where a climb begins.

“It would be like Strava for rock climbing... like Mario Kart, where you race against your ghost,” Pearman said.

He argues that better information can be particularly valuable when trying to find the start of a route or navigating after getting off route during a traditional, or trad, climb. Right now, climbers may have little more than a photo of a guidebook page on their phone to help them navigate.

“Guidebook descriptions are great, but you can only fit so much in text and drawings... they end up saying things like 'climb boldly above the bolt,' and you're going to read that and be like, well, ‘what does bold mean?’” Pearman said.

RockXR is still part of Pearman’s master’s thesis and isn’t yet available for the public to try.

However, it is being built as an open-source app where climbers could eventually add and update routes, with changes tracked over time. Information from climbers, as well as LiDAR scans collected while using AR glasses, could also be added.

ThreeTopo, meanwhile, is available in the App Store, allowing people to test the 3D map of Red Shirt on Yamnuska. RockXR currently includes scans of Red Shirt and Kahl Wall.

“I would be totally willing to pass the torch and open-source the whole thing, if people were down to start adding other routes to it,” Pearman said.

Rhys Beaudry, executive director of Climb Alberta, is more skeptical.

His concern isn't necessarily with the technology itself, but whether it can solve a deeper problem: getting climbers to consistently use and update information in one place.

In terms of how much any single app could change climbing or the Bow Valley climbing community, Beaudry expects the impact would likely be “trivial.”

“There's just like a chronic data problem in climbing,” Beaudry said. “How do you make sure that when someone puts up a new route, it ends up in the standard app, or the standard cluster of apps, or literally any app at all?”

Climbers already have numerous resources to help plan and navigate routes, ranging from traditional guidebooks to apps such as Mountain Project and Book of Stone.

“Book of Stone... has like 95, 99 per cent coverage of all routes in the Bow Valley... One guy did it. He walked around with a camera for seven years and then built an app around it,” Beaudry said.

That fragmentation is compounded by another issue: climbers don't all agree on how difficult or adventurous climbing should be.

There are also practical barriers to technology such as RockXR becoming widely adopted. Drone use is heavily restricted in national parks, where many climbing routes are located, and the Apple Vision Pro currently starts at $5,299.

“Is this a marked improvement on what's available? And is the information about how far the next bolt is any better than you calling down to your belayer when you're really scared and telling them you're scared and they're like, next hold's a jug?” Beaudry said.

“If there was a standard app that would be fantastic, but again you have to convince everyone, and not everyone has the same viewpoint.”

For Pearman, however, RockXR isn't necessarily about what climbing looks like today. It's about exploring what could become possible as the technology improves and becomes less expensive.

“What if we look ahead into the future and imagine what this could look like in, you know, 15 years, when augmented reality headsets are super small and super light and have good battery life? What would this system look like? What would it afford to climbers?” Pearman said.

Neither Pearman nor Beaudry sees technology like this as a replacement for learning fundamental rock climbing skills, including reading the rock and navigating independently.

But those skills can be difficult to develop without help and experience, and Pearman sees technology potentially filling some of that learning gap.

“Nothing can really replace having a super good mentor when you're learning how to rock climb. I think that's a very human experience,” Pearman said. “I think the reality is those people are kind of few and far between. The people that are super experienced oftentimes like to climb with other people that are super experienced…not everyone is volunteering their time out to the newbies on the Facebook group.”

Pearman points to his own experience learning to trad climb as an example of how people can end up learning without an experienced mentor.

“If you don't have that option, then you have to learn somehow. I mean, I learned by, I went to the store and I bought some nuts and I bought some cams and I watched a YouTube video on how to place trad gear and then I went out and I tried to trad climb. And I had some epics early on because I didn't really know how serious it could be.”

Giving people the opportunity to build confidence and better understand a route at home through immersive 3D maps could help some climbers who are reluctant to make the leap from indoor to outdoor climbing, Pearman argues.

The technology could also potentially show how difficult or dangerous an older route has become since it was first established and rated, giving climbers more information before they commit to it.

The debate is also part of a larger shift in attitudes toward climbing.

The sport was once widely viewed as inherently dangerous and adventurous, where serious injury or death was a distinct possibility. In the 1950s, Alberta climbing pioneers such as Leo Grillmair climbed using homemade or makeshift gear and took significant risks with every ascent.

Today, many people climb simply for recreation and exercise.

Those different levels of commitment, along with differing views about how adventurous or challenging climbing should be, create another information challenge.

“I think it all depends what you want to get out of rock climbing... there's been this more broad cultural shift where rock climbing doesn't really have to be dangerous or adventurous anymore,” Beaudry said.

Beaudry said that can make simple, straightforward solutions particularly valuable, even if they can be surprisingly difficult to implement.

“I think if there was a solution, we would have it already. The... I don't know, the most successful solutions tend to be the simplest ones. And one of the solutions that just like cannot be beat is if there's a little sign at the bottom of the route that tells you what the route is,” Beaudry said.

“Right now that's technically not permitted unless you have like a land management partnership or like a stewardship agreement with the land manager. Even at scale it's a problem. Like if you say there's 5,000 routes in the Bow Valley, how do you get a sign at the bottom of 5,000 routes? How do you get new routes to have a new sign?”

As with many aspects of outdoor rock climbing, there are different ideas about how to solve these problems but few universal rules. Much of the system remains community-based.

That information challenge was highlighted in a recent incident at Moose Mountain, where a misunderstanding about the state of a route led to a frightening incident and the injury of 18-year-old climber Savana King.

Beaudry has seen numerous apps come and go over the years that hoped to solve the same underlying problem.

“I'm generally supportive of more information and more information in the public domain... you just support people to make their own decisions,” he said.

RockXR offers climbers a glimpse of what that information could look like in the future.

It's a future that could resemble Pearman's vision, where route information is continually updated as people climb and shared freely with the community. Climbers could use lightweight AR glasses to find routes, navigate hands-free while on the wall and quickly access information when they need it.

“I really built this mostly because I think the data empowers people... I think it is additive to the sport. It creates new challenges for people. And I think that's kind of what we all want,” Pearman said.