“If you can’t hear what I’m tryna say…
If you can’t read from the same page
Maybe I’m goin’ deaf
Maybe I’m goin’ blind
Maybe I’m out of my mind”
-Pharrell and Robin Thicke1
“I used to go out to parties
And stand around
‘Cause I was too nervous…
To really get down
But my body
Yearned to be free
I got up on the floor and thought
Somebody could choose me”
-Marvin Gaye2
Imagine a climbing route developer. What comes to mind? Hard climbing? Strong personality? Maybe a bit intense? Is he white? Is he even a he? Sometimes says inappropriate jokes and chooses even worse climbing names?
Now picture how you access the route developer’s climbs: is it a paper guidebook? Mountain Project? Is it an app like Kaya? Or even augmented reality glasses with an AI assistant?3
What first came to mind for you? I’ll tell you what it was for me when I first learned about developers: a white, cis gender man with his shirt off and harness from 1999. Probably a beard and a situationship with his van. However, more recently when I think of guidebooks it has been digitally on an app like Kaya and route developers who are people of color willing to spread knowledge such as Gabriel Cisneros.
This article is going to be a ride, per usual: I am going to revisit the demographics of people in climbing based off some specific data collections, initiatives to get a diverse population into route developing, ethics around climbing names, and the controversy of app based guidebooks in regards to content and ownership. This article started out as me wanting to highlight the good work Gabriel Cisneros is doing here in Washington for a long time now in mentoring people of color to develop and re-bolt climbing areas. But I could not even express this story without a thorough conversation on the background in which a predominantly people of color developed crag called Robot Blocks came after.
The sections:
Part I: Demographics in Route Development
Part II: Route Development Initiatives
Part III: Robot Blocks
Part IV: Route Names
Part V: The Kaya Controversy
Part VI: The Digital Guidebook Landscape Shaped by Policy
Part I of V: Demographics in Route Development
Why would my first thoughts early on in my climbing time lead me to a cis gender white man as a developer? Well, the stats support this in climbing generally, not to mention an activity even more niche like developing…
Read/watch/listen to the rest of this journey on my Substack
Works Cited
- “Robin Thicke – Blurred Lines ft. T.I., Pharrell” YouTube, uploaded by Robin Thicke, 20 Mar 2013,
https://youtu.be/yyDUC1LUXSU?is=o7vXR8jf7Hbye0E4 ↩︎ - Got to Give It Up” YouTube, uploaded by Marvin Gaye, 29 Oct 2018, https://youtu.be/qhFNY9zW2F4?is=7BHIlpvxTvVw2RxB ↩︎
- Climbing Magazine. “Are 3D Topos and AI Climbing Assistants the Future of Climbing?” https://www.climbing.com/news/augmented-reality-3d-topos-climbing-technology/ 20 Aug 2026 ↩︎
