Rock climbing routes generated by neural network

Climbers have given nicknames to thousands and thousands of rock climbing routes - and the names range from quirky to rude to bizarre. Clearly, this makes them an excellent candidate for imitation by a neural network, which specializes in these three things exactly. With the help of my friend Adrian Hill, a programmer and rock climber, I obtained lists of the named routes in Boulder, Colorado (4,527) and Joshua Tree, California (5,633).

Here it is in the early stages of training, attempting to generate Boulder routes with as little daringness as possible (i.e. a low “temperature” setting). The prevalence of “start”, “stare”, and “stank” is characteristic of a struggling neural network in a way that would probably be really interesting to have a linguist explain someday.

Start of the Stare

Start of the Wall

Splot

Spleen Ward

Whittle Stroker

Space Traverse

Wark Fly Dorf

Space of Cheek

Cracker Traverse

Wart of the Hood

Wart of the Door

Starg, The

Wart Face

Spunger

Spleen Crack

Stank Traverse

Wild Stare

Start Fall

Spurt Face

Crackson

At a higher temperature setting, the neural net still doesn’t fare much better at the Boulder routes. These don’t sound much like climbing routes - they could be anything. The neural net needs more training.

Murfon Cow Sprolf

Porgo

Yourd of the Shire

O Dan Dawo P

Nire of the Bat

Bup

Slicny of the Never

Hot Ad

Eag of Nut Crack

Heller Pon Crack

Hen Shawt

Lo Dill

Bat

Here are the new climbing routes the fully trained neural net generated. Many of them end up a bit rude-sounding which is not an entirely unfair characterization of Boulder climbing routes.

Perfect (Crack)

Fight of the Buff Ponesharia

Miss of the West Wall

Warm Crack

Fleshy……

Leg in Trangers

Dirty Dill

Ass Over

Raging Action

Storming the Cat

Angry

Velvet Quarter

Be Here?

Fire on the Lookout

Midblood

Flesh Feat

Bricks

Gut Dyno

Dirty Low Down In It

Eldoran Goats

Take the Pinks



And here are the Joshua Tree routes that the neural net arrived at after a similar training process. There was slightly more Joshua Tree data, which helped the algorithm produce actually rather convincing route names:

Cosmic Center

Knob Crack

Oh Chain

Spit Slab

Problem crack

Spite Crack

Pockberg, The

Frenky Road

Problem R

Morning Slumps

King of the Cell

Bubbles and Sugar

Orangish Crack

Bad Back

Holy Wall

Good Job

Bumbles

Elbown

Ego’s Boys

Bongo Call

Sitting Mutters

It also picked up on the way Joshua Tree names like to use animals a lot - particularly dogs. Particularly poodles.

Dog

Chicken World

Don’t Bud Poodles

Shark Take

Folly Dog

Bear Dumble

Cat Brew 1

Burly’s Poodles

Tanga’s Bat Race

Buts Belly Goose

Love Bront Dogs

Dot Shatter Dogs

Slapshot Lizards

Chicken Problem 2

Dogstears and Short Sliggles

Bread Deads and My Lizards

I don’t know where some of its Joshua Tree route names came from, though.

Pows in My Falls

My Eat System

Filthrackler

We Ken of the Air

Mumbles and Conception

Punhead

Big Touch Aliens

But Darby and a Love Attack

Choset Hungocatter’s Loo Up the Poodles

Intersect in My Finger

Left Rocket

Pumpkin Beat

Amant My Fart

Mumbles and Woads

Roading Buns My Eanworsent

Mother That Hot Bolt Don’t Hell, Buttress

Borby Maw (aka Boogles of to the Sourdue Sock)

Chocolatrance Problem (aka The Boom Sag Poodle Boys A Pill-Bob)

There are more of these - mostly, the unprintable ones. If you’d like them (and all future bonus material), enter your email here.