Work

Summit Seeker

Project 12 March 2026 View repo
Web Development
Product Strategy
Mapping
APIs

A mountain discovery platform built with Alessandro Arensberg, complete with a custom YOLO model that identifies climbing holds from photos.

Mountain peaks at sunrise

Description

Summit Seeker is a collaborative project with Alessandro Arensberg focused on making mountain exploration more accessible and actionable. We designed a streamlined platform where users can discover the most efficient way to climb a natural rock wall. To achieve this, we fine‑tuned our own YOLO-based model, PRISE, to visually detect holds and suggest optimal ways to use them.

Key Features

  • Summit Discovery: Browse and search mountain spots with structured information, difficulty signals, and quick comparators.
  • Trip-Oriented UX: Designed flows centered on decision making, from discovery to route planning.
  • Data Enrichment: Integrated external data sources to provide richer context around each summit.
  • Responsive Interface: Built a layout that remains smooth and readable on mobile and desktop.

Technologies Used

  • Python : Language used to develop the entire project
  • PyTorch : Training model and create our own fine tune YOLO model
  • Albumentation : For data augmentation
  • Git: Version control and collaboration with Alessandro Arensberg.

My Role

Summit Seeker was a collaboration with Alessandro Arensberg. I focused on the model training and the data integration patterns that power the summit pages. Our model was a custom YOLO model called PRISE to detect climbing holds from photos.

What I Learned

Building for a niche audience — climbers — forced us to be precise. A generic route planner would not work; we had to understand grades, exposure, and hold types. It reinforced my belief that the best products come from knowing your user, not just your dataset.

Outcome

The project delivered a practical and elegant base product for mountain discovery, with a strong emphasis on clarity, performance, and collaborative product thinking.