🧗 OpenClimbing
The climbing guide that belongs to everyone.
Open climbing maps and interactive photo topos built on OpenStreetMap and Wikimedia Commons.
Like Wikipedia, but for rock: climbing data lives in public databases that anyone can use, improve and build upon.
Free. Open source. No ads. No paywall.
🗺️ Explore OpenClimbing ·
💬 Community ·
❤️ Sponsor
[!IMPORTANT]
⭐ Like what we're building? Please star OpenClimbing.
Click the ⭐ Star button at the top of this GitHub page.
It takes a second, costs nothing, and genuinely helps the project. More stars make OpenClimbing easier to discover, attract contributors and show that there is real interest in open climbing data.
If you believe climbing knowledge should remain open, your star is one of the easiest ways to support us. ❤️
→ Open the climbing map
The climbing guide that belongs to everyone
Most online climbing guides work the same way:
You contribute a route, photo or correction — and the information ends up inside a database controlled by one company.
OpenClimbing is built differently.
We don't want to build another proprietary climbing database.
Instead:
OpenClimbing brings these open datasets together and turns them into a modern climbing guide.
The important part is that the data doesn't belong to us.
Anyone can use it.
Anyone can improve it.
Anyone can build another app on top of it.
Even if OpenClimbing disappeared tomorrow, the climbing data would remain public.
The data should outlive the app.
What can you do with OpenClimbing?
🗺️ Explore climbing areas
Find crags, sectors, climbing routes, boulders and other climbing features directly on an interactive map.
🧗 Browse interactive topos
See climbing routes drawn directly over real photographs instead of trying to match route names to a vague description.
✏️ Edit the guide
Add new climbing areas, sectors and routes or improve existing ones.
Your edits become part of OpenStreetMap rather than disappearing into a private database.
📷 Create photo topos
Upload climbing photos to Wikimedia Commons and draw exact route lines, bolts and anchors over them.
☀️ Check sun & shade
See how the sun moves around a crag during the day and choose where to climb before leaving home.
🏔️ Explore terrain in 3D
Tilt the map and understand the orientation, shape and surroundings of a climbing area.
🤖 Detect bolts with AI
OpenClimbing can automatically recognize bolts on climbing photographs to make creating a topo faster.
📱 Edit from your phone
The climbing editor works on mobile, so you can upload photos and improve climbing data directly at the crag.
📄 Export offline PDF guides
Generate a guidebook for a climbing area and take it somewhere without mobile signal.
✅ Log your ascents
Keep track of the routes you have climbed and see your climbing activity.
Open data, all the way down
OpenClimbing is primarily an interface to open data, not the owner of the climbing database.
| What is stored there? | Why? |
|---|
| 🗺️ OpenStreetMap | Crags, sectors, routes, grades, geometry and climbing metadata | Anyone can edit and reuse it |
| 📷 Wikimedia Commons | Climbing and topo photographs | Photos remain part of a public media archive |
| 💻 GitHub | The OpenClimbing application | Anyone can inspect, improve or fork it |
This also means OpenClimbing doesn't have to be the only climbing application using this information.
That's the point.
We want climbing data to become an open foundation that other developers, mappers, researchers, guidebook authors and climbers can build upon.
Interactive photo topos
One of the things that makes OpenClimbing different is the ability to connect an OpenStreetMap climbing route with its exact path on a photograph.
We developed the wikimedia_commons:path tagging scheme for this.
A route can reference a Wikimedia Commons image:
wikimedia_commons = File:Roviste - Monolit.jpg
and describe its path over the image:
wikimedia_commons:path = 0.682,0.823|0.642,0.453B|0.557,0.177A
The coordinates describe the route line while markers can describe features such as:
B — boltA — anchorP — pitonS — fixed sling
The result is an interactive, machine-readable climbing topo built entirely from open data.
And because the specification is open, other applications can render exactly the same topo.
Why open climbing data?
We think basic information about climbing routes should be open in much the same way as information about:
- streets,
- hiking trails,
- peaks,
- buildings,
- rivers,
- or geographical names.
A route's name, grade, location and line are part of our shared knowledge of the physical world.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
