Arrive already understanding a place. Not a pin and a star rating. The approach, the light, the line that actually goes, and the thing to leave alone when you get there.
Land stewards. Local experts. The person who has been up it fifty times and knows why the second pitch is the one that catches people out. That knowledge is real, and it has never had a format.
A place does not stay current by magic. It stays current because one person decided this area is theirs to look after, and for the first time they are equipped and paid to do it. Not better data. A steward with tools.
Is it dry? Is the road open? Did the bolts get replaced? The most useful thing anyone can tell you is what a place is like right now, and that has never had a home either.
You know Google Earth. Spatial data goes further in. A Gaussian splat is an immersive capture of one place at one moment, close enough to read the rock, and it puts you inside it to look around for yourself rather than at a picture of it.
Twelve years. Drone teams. 521,000 photographs of rock across 112 projects in eight states. We know exactly what the good version cost, because we built it that way first. It could never scale, and we were never going to be enough.
So now: two years after that needed a survey crew and a workstation, ordinary kit gets you spatial data we could only have dreamed of, with no specialist hardware and nothing to learn.
A real Legend Guide, live on this page. Drag the terrain, open a chapter, follow the map. Change the screen and watch it rebuild for the hand it lands in.
Storytellers of place deserve what Substack gave writers. Your voice, your look, your audience, your price, and roughly 87% of what you earn. We charge for infrastructure, never for owning your work.
Photographs of rock in coherent capture sets — enough overlap to rebuild a wall in 3D — of 573,977 frames in the public build, across 2,929 captures and nine states. It becomes data anyone can build a guide on. Every platform in this category says the community owns the data. We are putting ours in first.
Climbing routes and 70,596 areas, free to read and free to add to. Contribute a place and it stays credited to you, forever.
Of drone footage across nine states, shot by a handful of people with a lot of driving. None of it was easy to get. All of it is the kind of thing a guidebook could never hold — and the tools that took us this long now fit in a pocket.
“People kept asking when we were coming to their area. We're not. But you can.”
Berk Frei, founder
Twelve years of drone teams taught us the expensive version, and it does not scale. Walk a boulder with your phone and put it on the map. Bring your own tilesets if you already have them.
Tips and subscriptions, ~87% after card fees. A guide built from your own work, ~90%. Build on places the community mapped and you keep 65% — the other 25% goes to them, which is the same pool that pays you when someone builds on yours. We charge for infrastructure, never for owning your work.
Video and audio are transcribed on upload, split into moments, and indexed. Stop scrubbing. Ask where he says which way to go at the ledge, and land on the second he said it.
“I hope I'm using someone else's guide to climb in Spain. One that I didn't make. That's what I want.”
Berk Frei, founder
Everything above is free to look at right now, no account needed. The web app — making your own guides, putting your own places on the map — opens to the public this summer. Leave an address and you get one email on the day it does.
One email, once. We never sell or share the list.