ThreeTopoDigital Navigation Tools for Multi-Pitch Trad Climbing

paper by ben pearman, kurtis danyluk, and wesley willett

ThreeTopo is a paper about digital navigation tools for multi-pitch trad climbing. It was actually given a Best Paper award at CHI 2026 🤯 which feels pretty crazy because it’s such a niche topic. Even so, the topic is important to a lot of people. If you’ve ever gotten lost while trad climbing, you know how scary and dangerous it can be!

Full paper available on the ACM Digital Library: ThreeTopo: Focused Interactive Navigation for Multi-Pitch Rock Climbing

If you don’t know what multi-pitch trad climbing is but you think this sounds cool, you should watch the supplementary video!

Supplementary Video

Try the ThreeTopo app

The iOS app is available on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/do/app/threetopo/id6749810663?platform=ipad