Mountaineering Skills for Claude Code

Automated mountain route research for North American peaks, built for Claude Code.

Quick Start • How It Works • Features • Installation • Support

Ask Claude to research any mountain. The route-researcher skill pulls from 10+ mountaineering sources and compiles a detailed Markdown report with current weather, avalanche conditions, daylight windows, trip reports, and route beta. What used to take 3-5 hours of tab-hopping now takes 3-5 minutes.

Route Researcher Demo

See it in action:

Peak	Elevation	What it shows
Mount Si	4,167 ft	High-traffic trail with abundant trip reports
Mount Adams	12,280 ft	Glaciated volcano with weather/avy conditions
Wolf Peak	5,813 ft	Technical scramble with sparse beta
Mount Shuksan	9,129 ft	Glacier climb requiring crevasse rescue skills
Tinkham Peak	5,398 ft	Accessible Class 2-3 scramble near Snoqualmie Pass

Quick Start

/plugin marketplace add dreamiurg/claude-mountaineering-skills
/plugin install mountaineering@mountaineering-marketplace

Then reload and try:

/reload-plugins
/mountaineering:research Mount Rainier

Or just ask naturally: "Research Mount Rainier". Claude generates a route beta report in your current directory.

How It Works

The skill uses a hybrid architecture: Python scripts for deterministic API calls, LLM agents for tasks requiring judgment.

MERMAID

graph TB
    Start([User asks Claude to<br/>research a peak]) --> Search[Phase 1-2: Peak Identification<br/>Search PeakBagger, fetch details]

    Search --> Parallel[Phase 3: Parallel Data Gathering]

    Parallel --> Python[Python Script<br/>Weather, daylight,<br/>avalanche, air quality]
    Parallel --> Agent1[Researcher Agent 1<br/>PeakBagger + SummitPost]
    Parallel --> Agent2[Researcher Agent 2<br/>WTA + Mountaineers]
    Parallel --> Agent3[Researcher Agent 3<br/>AllTrails]

    Python --> Analyze
    Agent1 --> Analyze
    Agent2 --> Analyze
    Agent3 --> Analyze

    Analyze[Phase 4: Route Analysis<br/>Synthesize data, identify hazards]

    Analyze --> Writer[Phase 5: Report Writer Agent<br/>Generate markdown report]

    Writer --> Reviewer[Phase 6: Report Reviewer Agent<br/>Validate accuracy, fix issues]

    Reviewer --> End([Phase 7: User receives<br/>route beta report])

    style Start fill:#e1f5ff
    style End fill:#e1f5ff
    style Parallel fill:#fff4e1
    style Python fill:#e8f5e9
    style Agent1 fill:#f0f0f0
    style Agent2 fill:#f0f0f0
    style Agent3 fill:#f0f0f0
    style Writer fill:#fff3e0
    style Reviewer fill:#fff3e0

Three researcher agents gather data in parallel while a Python script fetches conditions. Dedicated agents write and review the final report. If a source fails, the skill documents the gap and continues.

Features

Data Sources

The skill aggregates from specialized mountaineering sites:

Category	Sources
Peak info	PeakBagger
Routes	SummitPost, WTA, AllTrails, The Mountaineers
Weather	Open-Meteo, NOAA/NWS
Avalanche	NWAC, regional centers
Trip reports	PeakBagger, WTA, The Mountaineers

Coverage note: Report quality depends on how well-documented your peak is across these sources. Works best for popular North American peaks.

Graceful Degradation

Missing data? The skill notes what's unavailable in an "Information Gaps" section and provides manual lookup links. You always get a report, even if some sources are down.

Installation

Prerequisites: Claude Code, optionally uv for Python tools.

/plugin marketplace add dreamiurg/claude-mountaineering-skills
/plugin install mountaineering@mountaineering-marketplace
/reload-plugins

Python dependencies install automatically if uv is available. No restart needed -- /reload-plugins activates the plugin in the current session.

Usage

Commands

Command	What it does	Time
`/mountaineering:research <peak>`	Full route research report	3-5 min
`/mountaineering:conditions <peak>`	Weather, avalanche, air quality, daylight	~30 sec
`/mountaineering:trip-reports <peak>`	Recent trip reports from PeakBagger and WTA	1-2 min

Natural Language

You can also just ask naturally:

"Research Mt Baker"
"Get route beta for Forbidden Peak"
"I'm planning to climb Sahale Peak, can you research it?"

Reports save to your current directory as YYYY-MM-DD-peak-name.md.

Migration from v4.x

If you previously installed the plugin as mountaineering-skills, reinstall with the new name:

/plugin uninstall mountaineering-skills
/plugin install mountaineering@mountaineering-marketplace

Dependencies

peakbagger-cli v1.7.0 - peak data and trip reports
Python tools - weather, avalanche, and daylight calculations

Updates

/plugin list                          # check current version
/plugin update mountaineering  # update to latest

mountaineers-mcp -- MCP server that lets AI assistants search and browse mountaineers.org. Activities, courses, trip reports, your account data. Works with Claude Desktop, Claude Code, and Codex CLI.
mountaineers-assistant -- Chrome extension that syncs your mountaineers.org activity history and shows you stats, trends, and climbing partners you can't see on the site.
peakbagger-cli -- Command-line access to PeakBagger.com. Search peaks, check elevation and prominence, browse ascent stats. Outputs JSON for piping into other tools.

License

MIT

claude-mountaineering-skills