System aims to recreate mountain climbs in gym

HANOVER, N.H. » After spending time in Switzerland studying and hiking in the Alps, Dartmouth assistant professor Emily Whiting wanted to relive those climbs back home.

Upon her return to the United States, she and a group of colleagues contemplated how they might recreate the climbs indoors.

Using 3-D modeling and digital fabrication, the team developed a system that replicates the hardest stretches of climb, so that it can be practiced on indoor climbing walls. In a presentation at a human computer interaction conference last month, the team demonstrated how they replicated a climb in Rumney, New Hampshire, and a sandstone crag near St. George in Utah.

Fellow postdoctoral scholar Ladislav Kavan did the work out of Utah while Whiting was in New Hampshire.

The two, along with their team, also wanted to address problems that vex many seasoned climbers — the challenges of mastering a route that might be a world away or one that might be too fragile to practice on.

“What if you could take the experience of climbing places like these monuments but not climb the physical thing, actually bring it home to your local gym,” Whiting said.

Whiting and her colleagues first did a 3-D reconstruction of a wall using hundreds of photos at different angles. Then, they combined that with video showing the climber’s movements. That data helped the researchers identify the key parts of the climb, allowing them to create fabricated holds which were then attached to a climbing wall.