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!

ThreeTopo teaser

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