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Information about the project, team, and mission.
**Updated SummitX**: changes include editing username, image upload, title indicator, and improved object sorting.
SummitX has been updated. This article describes the changes that have taken place over the past three days. Editing username In your personal account (for the Russian localization of the site, this is ), you can now change the strange username issued to you upon registration to something beautiful and familiar: List of your articles in your personal account Take a look at the image above: a section "My content → Articles" has appeared in your personal account. It will display all the articles you have ever written on the site. Uploading images to articles and comments Now, when inserting an image, the image upload process is displayed: This allows you to understand what is happening with the image and know when it will be fully uploaded. Header indicator
Website Updates – Part 2
### Website Update: Enhanced Features for Users * Mirror site for Russian users * Invitation-free registration * Internal link support for streamlined navigation
And a few more important news about the site Mirror for Russians \[beta] Since many people have problems accessing the site from Russia, it was decided to set up a mirror that should partially or completely solve the problem: . Everything is the same, but without circumvention tools. You probably saw a pop-up message about this mirror when you visited the site. To make it easier to remember the address, a link has been added to the Russian version of the site in the footer. Registration without invite codes Now you don't need an invite to register on the site! But you can still enter a friend's invite during registration to support their rating. Internal links To make it easier to link to routes, peaks, passes, or articles from articles and comments, support for internal links has been added. Simply insert a link to the desired object into the text, so that readers see a well-formatted link with the language already substituted, which is convenient for them. A few examples:
Ability to Add Regions
Now on summitx.info any user can add a mountain region - a valley or a gorge, which will simplify navigation and planning ascents.
Now any registered user can add valleys and gorges as mountain regions. Examples of added regions: Why this is valuable to the community The added region is automatically integrated into the hierarchy. All its mountains, passes, and routes are automatically linked to it. Those planning ascents, searching for routes, or studying the area will find it much easier to navigate: they can easily look up the 5As in Ak-Sai. They won't have to search for these 5As among all the 5As of the vast Kyrgyz Ala-Too range. The gorge gets its own page with the ability to ask questions about it on the forum, post or article specifically about this gorge. A visitor can easily see the boundaries of the valley, which can be especially useful for mountain tourists. How to add a gorge or valley It's very easy to do. A minimally formatted valley requires literally a few seconds.
New features: direct video uploads to posts, a writing assistant for authors, a refreshed homepage, and an improved mobile experience.
Several useful features have been added to the website. Video Uploads Previously, only links to external video services (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.) could be added to articles, descriptions, and comments. Now it is possible to upload small video clips directly to the website. The video will be embedded directly in the article, route description, or geographical object. An example of a route description with video clips can be viewed in the description of the new Ala-Archa route: Writing Assistant For article authors, the ability to check the quality of typed text has been added. This will help you write higher quality texts, without typos and errors. For example, here is what the assistant found in this article while it was being edited: Other Improvements The main page has been redesigned. Instead of an article feed, it now contains summary information about the latest events on the website: articles, discussions, new routes, etc. New visitors will find it easier to navigate the portal's features. The article feed now lives on a separate page. Filters have become more compact in the mobile version of the website.
Climber rankings and detailed analytics released
SummitX has introduced four new climber ratings: Mastery, Explorer, Current Form, and Altitude. Automatically calculated from logged ascents, these metrics provide an objective evaluation of different facets of your mountaineering experience.
User ratings have been added to the SummitX website. Now, your completed climbs automatically build not only your personal history but also several ratings: mastery, explorer rating, current form, and altitude rating. Ratings are recalculated once a day, at night. Therefore, if you added or updated climbs today, the changes will not appear instantly but after the next recalculation. User rating page: Detailed user analytics: Global analytics and leaderboards: Why ratings are needed
The New Year on summitx.info started with an update: a notification system has been added, allowing users to subscribe to articles about geographical objects and manage their subscriptions. The article cover system has also been revamped.
The site has undergone a New Year's update. There are many changes, and I'll cover the key ones. Notification System The site is gradually acquiring features that will make communication more comfortable. The introduction of notifications (the "bell" in the site header) is a logical continuation of this development. The system is quite complex, so there will likely be more work to eliminate errors. The notifications follow the site's concept - linking physically existing objects on Earth to the virtual space. Therefore, you can subscribe not just to "new articles," but to all articles posted for the peaks/routes of the Caucasus, or subscribe to new articles about a mountain or even a specific route that interests you. Subscribing to a Mountain Region/Peak/Route On the geographical object's page, you can subscribe to articles about it and all its child objects. For example, by subscribing to "Central Caucasus," I will receive notifications about stories about Bezengi, descriptions of new routes on Ushba, etc. Subscribing to a Library Section A subscription button for new articles in the library has appeared on the section page: Subscribing to a Forum Section
Ability to add your ascents
SummitX has launched a climbing history section: users describe route segments, building a living database with current difficulty ratings instead of outdated grades. Import from ФАР is available, with all fields optional.
A major new section has been added to SummitX: now every user can keep their own ascent history. This isn't just a "where I've been" list: from user ascents, a living route database gradually begins to grow. With current assessments and descriptions of sections, a history of changes, and a proper classification mechanism that doesn't depend on one person, an old table, or a random subjective assessment. The full list of ascents is already available here: . In a user profile, the list looks like this: (I've only just started filling out my own list). Rather broad search options for ascents are offered: Why add your ascents at all At first glance, it might seem like just a personal diary. Well, you climbed a route, wrote down the date, checked a box. But it's all a bit cooler than that. I'm trying to create not just a list of routes, but a system where routes are gradually refined by the climbers themselves. The more people add their ascents and describe route sections, the more accurate—and therefore more useful—the database becomes. Soviet/Russian route categories are useful, but they are very coarse. One 3B category can hide completely different things. Two routes of the same difficulty under the old classification can differ radically: one short but with a hard crux; another long but technically uniform; a third dangerous because of seracs; a fourth easy in movement but with almost no decent protection.
Website Updates – Part 1
Users of the site can now edit mountaineering routes, add descriptions and draw tracks on the map, as well as create new routes.
Now every user of the site can edit alpine routes and add their own. In addition to the impersonal official name "via the right couloir of the S wall", you can add a folk name that is known to everyone. You can draw a route thread, and it will be displayed on the map. Write a detailed description of the route, with pictures, etc. It is important not to confuse this with reports and articles. This is precisely a general description of the route. An example of a more or less edited route: How to edit a route Click the edit button on the route page: You will be taken to the draft edits page. The draft can be saved and you can return to editing it later using the same button, or from your personal account. To draw or edit a route line, on the card with the map, you need to click the edit button (1), after which you can simply click on the map to add, delete or move points: By the way, take a look at the other buttons:
Refined the T-route difficulty calculation algorithm: adjusted ratings for different rock systems, snow and ice. Added transparency regarding how ascents affect ratings, plus improved profile and editor design.
Recently, the website implemented the ability to add your own ascents. These are used to refine the difficulty/hardness/danger of routes, as well as to build user ratings. The feature received a response from the community: many added their ascents, thanks to which I got the opportunity to test the ratings on real data. Thanks to Igor Dementyev, Alexey Pototsky, Dmitry Trukhatkin, Natalia T., Dmitry Dobrokhotov and many others! Refinement of the route difficulty calculation algorithm Thanks to your data, I found several important flaws in the algorithm and fixed them. The T grade algorithm became more accurate in several places: All rock grading systems are accounted for. Previously, only UIAA was calculated, while grades in French, YDS and Ewbank were silently lost. Snow 30-35° is now aligned with real difficulty. Previously it was counted almost as UIAA III. Aid climbing is better separated from snow and ice. A2 is now noticeably harder than AI4. Long easy sections no longer "complicate" the route technically: 100 m of walking snow and 100 m of WI4 now add completely different contributions. The difficulties of all routes for which ascents were specified have been recalculated. In the foreseeable future, 3-4 more clarifying changes to the algorithm will happen. It is not yet perfect, and there is work to be done. Transparency of ascent contributions to ratings
Site update: mountain cell coverage map (Ala-Archa, Khibiny, Kodar, Elbrus), more accurate route difficulty calculation, infinite scroll, print-friendly output, and a Share button.
The website has been updated once again. Cellular Coverage Map Communication in the mountains is very important. It is not only an opportunity to post photos from the route on social media, but also serious assistance in rescue operations. An experimental feature has been added to view an assessment of cellular network availability in the area. Unfortunately, there is no comprehensive database of cell towers in the world, so it is impossible to calculate coverage availability for the entire world. However, geodata moderators now have the ability to add cell towers to our database, which has made it possible to at least partially improve data coverage for the regions: Ala-Archa and neighboring Alamedin, Arshan in the Tunkinsky Goltsy, Khibiny, eastern Kodar, and the Elbrus area. This is reference information. We are not responsible for data accuracy. But it would be great if we could gradually supplement the tower database and get a more accurate picture of coverage. For the geeks, here's how it works: the idea is based on ray tracing. We have the tower coordinates, their approximate height, and terrain. Using this data, one can build a map of shadows from the towers. Well, everything that's not shadow—there's coverage there. Well, and of course there are limits to signal propagation. For different technologies these are completely different distances: 5G and 2G differ by more than an order of magnitude. Refined Algorithm for Route and Section Difficulty Assessment






