BEND, Ore. — A Caldera High School senior is combining his love for climbing and coding to change the way athletes train.<\/p>\n
Levi Waters, 17, has developed ClimbGrade, an AI-powered app that scans photos of climbing routes and rates their difficulty with consistent, data-based accuracy. The app even factors in a climber\u2019s height, wingspan and weight to provide a more personalized rating.<\/p>\n
Waters says his goal is to solve a long-standing frustration in the climbing community — inconsistent ratings between gyms.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve realized it\u2019s very hard to track my progress as a competitor,\u201d Waters said. \u201cIt\u2019s really important to know what level you\u2019re climbing at.\u201d<\/p>\n
Local climbers have already tested the app and say they\u2019re impressed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt keeps everything consistent,\u201d said Jackson Bloom, a Bend climber. \u201cYou go to different gyms and it can be really inconsistent.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom what I\u2019ve seen already, it actually works,\u201d added Jak Reynolds. \u201cGyms and even universal boards could use this kind of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
What started as a high school engineering project has gained attention from EDCO and High Desert CTE, earning Waters a $700 award at the Bend Venture Conference to keep developing his app.<\/p>\n
Waters hopes ClimbGrade will soon be integrated into local gyms, giving climbers a reliable way to measure progress across different routes.<\/p>\n
The app is set to officially launch January 1, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BEND, Ore. — A Caldera High School senior is combining his love for climbing and coding to change…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139791,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[712,61,60,342,202,43,112,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-139790","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-email","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-local","12":"tag-mobile","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}