![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/3.jpg\"\/)
After Thursday, March 26, every screen on the original Kilter Board app showed an error message. The climbing log, which usually shows up on the Profile page, was missing. (Photo: Sam MacIlwaine)<\/p>\n
Like many gym owners, Ben Rueck<\/a>, who co-owns Grip Bouldering in Grand Junction, Colorado, only found out about the issue after his customers alerted him. \u201cIn general, we found people mostly upset about not having their stats and project lists, as well as the abruptness of Kilter being removed,\u201d he told Climbing.<\/p>\n I still had the original Kilter app on my phone. But now, every page was blank, and my logged routes were replaced by an error message: \u201cData not found.\u201d When I downloaded the new Kilter app, it said my account didn\u2019t exist, so I created a new account with my old username. When I connected to my gym\u2019s Kilter Board with the new app, I had no idea which boulders I had previously attempted or topped. The \u201c0 climbs\u201d summary on my new profile felt insultingly blank.<\/p>\n If I had known I\u2019d lose my logs without warning, I\u2019d have tracked my Kilter boulders elsewhere. Who had the right to delete a whole swath of my training like this?<\/p>\n The new Kilter app got 20,000 downloads in its first 24 hours; within three days, it had more than 35,000. The social media backlash on Kilter\u2019s page was swift and emotional, full of climbers\u2019 complaints that mirrored mine. \u201cRIP my 3,150 ascents,\u201d commented Sebastian Rodriguez, who became the first Uruguayan climber to send 8c\/5.14b in 2019. \u201cWorst day of my life,\u201d commented another person. Others were more optimistic, including American boulderer Matt Fultz. \u201cGood excuse to do some repeats,\u201d he wrote, punctuating his comment with a shrug emoji.<\/p>\n But as climbers come to grips with this data loss, a competing narrative has emerged about who was responsible for removing personal training logs from tens of thousands of climbers without warning. The original Kilter app was controlled by an independent developer, Peter Michaux, who had been in and out of lawsuits with Kilter for three years. Michaux says that he was forced to take down the app\u2019s data because of a cease and desist letter Kilter sent him on March 19. But Kilter\u2019s co-owner, Jackie Hueftle, says that while the cease and desist letter was for Kilter\u2019s name, logo, and board layout, it did not say Michaux needed to hide climbers\u2019 data. So who\u2019s telling the truth?<\/p>\n Climbing dug into dozens of pages of legal documents and spoke extensively with both Michaux and Hueftle to understand what happened\u2014and how climbers can recover their training history.<\/p>\n The origins of the problem<\/p>\n In a typical software development contract, a company hires a developer to write code for them, and the company owns the code. But Kilter never signed such a contract with Peter Michaux. Instead, from the start, they relied exclusively on verbal agreements.<\/p>\n In 2017, Michaux, a Squamish-based climber and engineer, launched Aurora Climbing and began selling Bluetooth-controlled LED lights to various hold companies for use in their training boards. For each board, he also released a custom app. Michaux did not invent Bluetooth-controlled LEDs, which have existed since 2010, and he wasn\u2019t the first to stick them behind climbing holds. Moon Climbing was the first to do this, with their 2016 MoonBoard.<\/p>\n Later in 2016, the Tension Board 1 was released as the second LED board on the market, followed by the Kilter Board in 2018, the Grasshopper Board in 2020, the Decoy Board and Tension Board 2 in 2022, and the So iLL Connect Board in 2024. To gyms and climbers, these appeared to be separate products sold by unrelated companies, but on the back end, their apps were all programmed and maintained by the same company: Aurora Climbing.<\/p>\n Compared to the MoonBoard and the Tension Board, the Kilter Board is much more beginner-friendly, with large, grippy holds that allow you to train power while generally reducing the likelihood of a finger injury. Perhaps that explains why the Kilter Board has exploded in popularity in the last few years. From 2021 to 2024, setters consistently voted Kilter their favorite board in Climbing Business Journal\u2019s Grip Awards. By 2024, the Colorado-based company was generating $8 million in revenue.<\/p>\n Today, Kilter has sold 2,100 boards, and currently employs about 20 people globally. It\u2019s the official training partner of World Climbing (formerly known as the International Federation of Sport Climbing) and a wall and setting partner for the Pro Climbing League<\/a>. An open-source database<\/a> maintained by Dutch climber Stevie-Ray Hartog lists the Kilter Board second only to MoonBoard in global popularity, likely due to the prevalence of MoonBoards in at-home training walls. Climbing Business Journal\u2019s current commercial gym map<\/a> indicates that, when looking only at gyms, Kilter is the most popular training board in the world.<\/p>\n A verbal agreement descends into all-out war<\/p>\n Even as the Kilter Board grew in profit and popularity, their relationship with Aurora grew strained due to the lack of a written contract. Eventually, their disagreements spiraled into lawsuits<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIn August 2022, Kilter started to make comments to us about their new belief that they owned some of Aurora\u2019s intellectual property,\u201d Michaux told Climbing. In Aurora\u2019s view, Kilter was a customer for Aurora\u2019s light kit and app, not a partial owner. But in Kilter\u2019s view, they had jointly developed the app with Aurora and therefore had an ownership stake. That same year, Kilter began quietly developing a new app with different engineers.<\/p>\n In April 2023, seeking to clarify their business relationship, Michaux added a new terms and conditions agreement to one of Kilter\u2019s orders of Aurora light kits. These terms stated that Aurora was the sole owner of the app and all related software, and that Kilter would not develop a separate app for its board.<\/p>\n Kilter refused to sign it. Instead, the company canceled the order and sued Aurora for $1 million in damages in September 2023 in Colorado. Their suit included a list of performance-related accusations: that Aurora failed to deliver app features it had promised, shared pieces of the Kilter app with Kilter competitors, and locked Kilter out of the app.<\/p>\n After six months of negotiations, in April 2024, the companies came to an agreement: Kilter would drop the lawsuit, Aurora would sell them 655 light kits at a fixed price, both parties would keep negotiating, and any future lawsuits would take place in British Columbia, where Aurora is based.<\/p>\n But one year later, each company had fresh gripes. Kilter accused Aurora of selling faulty light kits that disappointed customers. Aurora accused Kilter of reverse-engineering their controller box with another developer. After June 2024, Aurora stopped selling to Kilter, and their business relationship officially ended.<\/p>\n \u201cWe haven\u2019t had clear statistics for our app for a few years because [Aurora] stopped sending it to us,\u201d said Hueftle, who has been at the helm of Kilter since 2013. \u201cOne person was defining the experience that our customers were having all around the world.\u201d In March 2025, Kilter modified their new app to serve as a possible replacement to Aurora\u2019s controller box. Several months later, a customer sent Aurora a non-Aurora controller box that Michaux said looked very similar to his own design.<\/p>\n By July 2025, Kilter and Aurora were back in court. Kilter sued Aurora for breach of their April 2024 agreement, defamation and libel to customers, and deceptive trade practices. One month later, Aurora sued Kilter for breach of contract and passing off third-party LED kits as Aurora\u2019s.<\/p>\n Finally, in March 2026, in the undertow of dueling lawsuits, Kilter made a move that ultimately led to this behind-the-scenes dispute becoming very, very public.<\/p>\n The cease and desist heard \u2018round the world<\/p>\n On March 19, Kilter sent Aurora a three-page letter demanding that Aurora \u201cimmediately cease and desist all use of Kilter\u2019s valuable trademark and copyrights,\u201d including Kilter\u2019s name, logo, and images of its board layout. If Aurora did not agree to do this within five business days, the letter warned, Kilter would add trademark and copyright infringement claims to its existing lawsuit.<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t really a decision on my part,\u201d Michaux told Climbing. \u201cThe trademarks they were telling us to stop using\u2026 were inextricable from the [Kilter] app. They were in the identifier; they\u2019re in the name of the app on the App Store; they\u2019re on all of the apps to communicate with our service, which had \u2018Kilter\u2019 in it, and we can\u2019t change those apps to communicate with a different server.\u201d (By \u201cidentifier,\u201d he meant the Bundle ID in the Apple App Store and package name in Google Play.) \u201cAll the ways that you would discover the [Kilter] app and that the app would communicate data is bound to the trademark that they were demanding we stop using,\u201d he emphasized.<\/p>\n Hueftle saw it differently. \u201cThe letter did not say that he needed to hide everybody\u2019s data or shut down the data,\u201d she told Climbing. While that may be technically true, the letter did require Aurora to stop using Kilter\u2019s trademarked name, which was in the immutable identifier and the server name (api.kilterboardapp.com). Without a server, the app can\u2019t load data; without Kilter\u2019s trademarked board design, the problems can\u2019t be displayed.<\/p>\n On March 24, Michaux texted Hueftle directly. \u201cIt appears that Kilter is demanding that Aurora stop offering the Aurora App for use with Kilter Boards for download and stop supporting it,\u201d he wrote, according to text messages viewed by Climbing. \u201cIf that is not Kilter\u2019s intention, please advise.\u201d<\/p>\n Hueftle did not respond. The next day, Kilter\u2019s attorney called Aurora\u2019s attorney and left a two-minute voicemail, the first 30 seconds of which Michaux shared with Climbing (He claimed the rest of the message was unrelated to taking down the app). The voicemail from Kilter\u2019s attorney stated:<\/p>\n \u201cJackie [Hueftle] advised that Peter [Michaux] reached out directly to her to ask about the cease and desist. I recognize that the cease and desist is officially saying that Aurora is no longer going to operate the app. We are asking that Aurora strictly comply with the language in the cease and desist, but that also includes the preservation of all data that must be preserved.\u201d<\/p>\n To Michaux, the strict compliance request confirmed that he was obligated to remove the app right away to avoid trademark infringement.<\/p>\n Finally, on the morning of March 26, seven days after receiving the cease and desist letter, Michaux disabled the Kilter app server and took it down from the App Store and Google Play. Within hours, Kilter had released their new app and announced it as a replacement. That\u2019s when climbers across the world realized their entire history of Kilter Board sessions was missing.<\/p>\n How can climbers regain their data\u2014and keep training on the Kilter board?<\/p>\n In our separate interviews, both Michaux and Hueftle sound exhausted by this week\u2019s backlash from climbers. Neither seems happy about what happened or how.<\/p>\n In the past few days, Michaux has responded to hundreds of individual emails from climbers demanding or requesting their data. He\u2019s been providing a JSON file\u2014a text document of field-value pairs, arranged by curly brackets\u2014to any climber who emails support@auroraclimbing.com<\/a>, so long as they reach out with the email that corresponds to their old username. Yesterday, I emailed Aurora from my personal email and got a response in two hours. My JSON file contained a relatively neat list of timestamped ascents and attempts, but I couldn\u2019t sort them by date without writing my own code. At the moment, Kilter\u2019s new app does not offer a way for climbers to upload and visualize their old logs, but a few open-sourced sites do, such as Sandbox Bouldering<\/a> for the 12\u00d712 Kilter Board and Boardsesh<\/a> for all sizes.<\/p>\n By contrast, the Kilter team has been swarmed with bugs in their new app<\/a>, which they said<\/a> they had wanted more time to polish it before launching. (In my session on Saturday, I was unable to log any attempts.) With a team spread across Europe, Australia, and the U.S., Kilter has been troubleshooting user issues nearly 24 hours each day.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve just been in front of my computer for three days,\u201d said Hueftle. \u201cWe know this is a huge frustration and inconvenience for folks, and we appreciate everyone\u2019s patience through this transition.\u201d She asks that all bugs be reported to app.kiltergrips.com\/feedback<\/a> so they can be directed to one of Kilter\u2019s developers. New app users can also claim the boulders they set on the old app at kilterboard.io\/claim<\/a>.<\/p>\n Even though Kilter\u2019s full product is now totally divorced from Aurora\u2019s software, the companies aren\u2019t out of legal jeopardy yet. On March 30, a Colorado judge dismissed Kilter\u2019s lawsuit, but Aurora\u2019s lawsuit against Kilter is still set to continue and could very well lead to significant financial penalties. In the meantime, Aurora remains in control of the Tension, Decoy, Grasshopper, So iLL, Touchstone, and Aurora Board apps.<\/p>\n Despite the bumpy rollout of the new app and a looming lawsuit, the Kilter team finally has what they\u2019ve wanted for a long time: a product they 100% control, just like Moon Climbing. \u201cWe\u2019ve basically been stuck for a few years,\u201d says Hueftle. \u201cWe\u2019re going to be here for our community. They just have to stick with us as we get through it.\u201d<\/p>\n If Kilter can placate disappointed climbers, clean up their app, and survive its legal battles, they\u2019re likely to continue to hold their user base in the world of board climbing. The new Kilter app already has a few features that the old one didn\u2019t: verified climbs (similar to Moon\u2019s Benchmarks), a five-star rating system (as opposed to the three-star one), a temporary grade range for new problems, and a toggle to switch between V-grades and Font grades. It\u2019s messy, but there\u2019s certainly promise.<\/p>\n Ultimately, I\u2019m lucky: Board climbing is supplemental training for me, not my main goal. For the time being, I\u2019ll be sticking with Kilter because that\u2019s the only board my Moab gym has. Until I leave town next month, I\u2019ll use any app that works with it\u2014even if I have to ignore the occasional sense of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu.<\/p>\n![\"Three](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/2.jpg\"\/)
Screenshots of Peter Michaux\u2019s messages to Jackie Hueftle on March 24, 2026, two days before Michaux removed all data from the original Kilter app (Photo: Courtesy of Peter Michaux)<\/p>\n