How to climb the Swiss Alps in a rock gym
A Dartmouth professor and a team of her colleagues has figured out how to replicate climbs a whole world away.
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It’s a problem many climbers face: They want to scale mountains and walls in far-off countries, but can’t get there, or want to train for a specific route in advance of the climb.
Now, there’s a solution.
Dartmouth assistant professor Emily Whiting and postdoctoral scholar Ladislav Kavan, at the University of Utah, have replicated climbs in New Hampshire and Utah. The system uses hundreds of photos of the routes from different angles and videos of climbers’ movements, the Washington Post reported. The end result is a set of fabricated holds that mimics the rock face in nature.
Whiting came up with the idea while studying and hiking in the Swiss Alps, wanting to bring those experiences home with her.
“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 told the Post. “You would still have the physical experience of climbing it without causing the erosion and damage to the location.”
