The Genesis of TreckView:

What began in 2008 as a joke during a descent in Benasque eventually evolved, ten years later, into TreckView—a pioneering 360° immersive route platform. Years later, it would become the continuous record of the longest mountain trek ever documented using this technology: the Trans-Pyrenean GR11.

Common wisdom says that any serious tech startup needs to be born in a garage, buried under a mess of cables and circuit boards, and driven by some wunderkind capable of rewriting the rules of the game with a few lines of code.

Well, that’s not my story. I was just a regular hiker who got roasted by his climbing partner. Any other day, that would’ve been a quick laugh, forgotten ten minutes later. But for some reason, that epic teasing was the spark that eventually grew into TreckView.”

There’s an explanation for everything, however crazy it sounds. We were hiking down the track to La Besurta after a weekend of granite scrambling on the Cregüeña ridge back in 2008. I was carrying an old-school alpine pack—the kind I still use—long, narrow, 70 liters, with zero bells and whistles. It was basically a haul bag, and the space vanished the second you tried to pack both climbing gear and an overnight setup. The result? Along with the rope and helmet, I had to strap all our clanking hardware to the outside, giving us away as ‘rock rats’ from a mile off.

My camera was draped over the gear, attached to the strap of its padded case. It never crossed my mind that those plastic clips were the weak point. Our fast-paced descent meant all that gear was swinging violently—not exactly great for the structural integrity of plastic components.

And then, the inevitable happened.

The ceaseless dance of the climbing gear ended up snapping one of the camera case clips, leaving it dangling on one side. The camera was literally flying from one side of the pack to the other, striking everything in its path.

If we hadn’t been just a few hundred meters from the parking lot, my partners wouldn’t have minded stopping so I could secure the camera properly. And you can’t blame them… we were exhausted, and that pack weighed a ton. Stopping would have cost us dearly; we just needed to reach the car and drop the weight.

But not blaming them doesn’t mean I kept quiet about my frustration. Oh, I definitely didn’t. A true recital of curses, with a repertoire spanning several languages and even some dead ones. A cappella.

We reached the parking lot while I was still treating the audience to a display worthy of the Necronomicon itself, when we saw it pass by. Right before our eyes, the Google Street View car with its massive dodecahedral camera mounted on the roof. Silence fell for a brief moment.

That’s when the quick-wittedness of one of my partners shone through; fed up with my philosophical ramblings, he kindly invited me to carry one of those cameras on our next outing, just to see if, for the love of God, I’d finally stop whining.

After the collective laughter died down, an idea had taken root in my brain:

What if I actually do it?

I didn’t waste any time starting my research into Google Street View—how their camera system worked, their operational mode, the software used, and, above all, the identity of the supplier.

I gathered enough information to get a basic idea of what I’d seen in that parking lot, so without further ado, I headed to the home of a professional translator friend so she could help me with a couple of video calls to Google’s suppliers.

What I heard sounded promising, but my excitement plummeted once we started talking numbers and conditions. They were asking for an exorbitant amount for a camera and the software (even by today’s standards), and not content with that, they wanted ownership of all the images I captured. Ironically, I told my friend to order two units and have them sent via diplomatic pouch.

I have no clue what she actually translated to the person on the other end, but judging by his smile, I can safely assume it wasn’t exactly what I had blurted out. In situations like these, the professionalism and diplomacy of the person translating make all the difference. I never heard back from those suppliers.

Given how things were going, I had to pivot. Street View was booming, and images of our towns and cities were spreading like wildfire. Technology was maturing at breakneck speed, and it was only a matter of time before more affordable, portable cameras hit the market. I needed to stay ahead of the curve and be ready when the moment came.

Initially, I focused on software and spherical image processing, which was the only area where I could make progress, for obvious reasons. I knew what I wanted, but I was pretty much flying blind.

Neither an IT specialist nor a photographer. We’re off to a great start.

Yes, that was the reality I was facing. I wanted to do something that was inherently aimed at two specific profiles I didn’t possess. I had some general notions in both fields, but I was a long way off from what I needed.

Fortunately, I had an internet connection, a desk, a computer, a desk lamp, paper, and a pen. The basic DIY learning kit. It’s a start.

Time went by while I learned a bit here and a bit there, all while technology kept advancing and the 360 concept began to take hold. The first virtual tours in closed spaces started to appear. Differentiation was being forged in 360°.

At that moment, I thought it was time to acquire digital skills more formally, enough to understand the scope of what was already brewing in my head. Although it didn’t solve the technical hurdle, it gave me a good foundation to organize the digital ecosystem and shape the project. I had the vision, and now the mission. The “how” and the form it would take remained mysteries.

I had to keep actively searching for technical answers, so I regularly dove into the web in search of new 360 developments.

By the time the crunch time arrived, I had already contacted a German company that was challenging the Google suppliers with lighter, cheaper equipment. As always, things went well until the financial proposal arrived. It was out of my reach, but their software already hinted that what I was looking for wouldn’t take long to arrive.

By the time the crunch time arrived, I had already developed the bulk of the project. I had focused on steering the technology toward solving one of the biggest problems in outdoor sports: the growing number of mountain accidents and rescues, as indicated by official reports from federations and the GREIM, mainly due to poor planning. This poor planning included miscalculations by the rescued individuals regarding the difficulty and exposure of their chosen routes.

The year-on-year results were showing an upward trend. The accessibility of technical mountain gear and the rise of so-called “active tourism” meant that new waves of mountain sports enthusiasts were arriving without having gone through a club, without having received technical training from the federations, and without ever having set foot on a trail accompanied by the “old school.” There was no transmission of knowledge, nor of classic mountain values. And that’s to say nothing of the influence of social media.

And yes, unfortunately, the consequences were starting to show. People crossing the Aneto glacier in tennis shoes, mocking the guide accompanying other climbers for his “excessive equipment.” The result: a slip, a fall into a crevasse, and the mountain guide having to initiate a rescue operation. People hiking in high heels near the Brèche de Roland, or others wandering off-route, following a photocopy of a “recommended excursion” article to an easy three-thousand-meter peak from a mainstream magazine. Firsthand information.

The problem was clear, and it had to be tackled at the root. I had to create a digital platform that would allow both experienced mountaineers and beginners to have the necessary information to plan a route safely, using 360 technology to provide real visual continuity of the entire journey.

Anyone who has ever planned a route knows there’s a ton of information online—some of it excellent, but a lot of it terrible. You have to spend precious time digging through it, cross-checking sources to see if the information is reliable, curated, and free of bias.

My goal was to consolidate everything essential for proper planning into a single page, tailored specifically to each route. I wanted anyone searching for information to find exactly what they need in one place, so they only have to spend their time on the necessary cross-checking for their own peace of mind. You must always verify information, no matter how good it looks. Always.

As I moved forward with designing the architecture, I began to realize that the challenge wasn’t just about displaying a mountain in 360°. The technology was only one piece of the puzzle. The truly difficult part was answering a much more complex question: what information does a person actually need to decide if they are prepared to tackle a route?

A first informative layer included real-time weather, links to official bodies providing snow and avalanche reports, a curated and reliable GPS track for download, and a Google Maps link to the route’s starting point.

The second layer was about eliminating the bias regarding difficulty and exposure. Every author has a very personal interpretation of how difficult a route is or the level of exposure involved, especially on routes not subject to UIAA criteria—which come into play once you need to use your hands. I would later encounter the MIDE method.

The third layer would provide the user with navigation information that was as technical and objective as possible, structured by sections to allow for a quick search. It also needed to offer quick access to key route data: water sources, shelters, areas of special concern… the doubts we always have when looking for an itinerary had to be resolved at a glance, before diving into the details.

The final layer was dedicated to navigation. Curated tracks with points of interest included, preferably with an elevation profile, and the pièce de résistance—what had brought me here in the first place: the 360-degree panoramic tunnel.

I had everything I needed to draft an international-scale project and register the brand. So much so that I decided to use a pun in English, while also making a small nod to those who pioneered taking this technology outdoors. Trekking + Track + View = TreckView. The visualization of the track in the mountains, in the style of Google Street View.

By 2016, I already had the trademark registered and the project dossier written and protected under a Creative Commons license.

Armed with the project dossier, I set out to find companies with 360-degree equipment to establish a partnership. I met with several, and the answer, with minor variations, was always the same. Essentially, they told me it was an impossible and unviable project; one even questioned my mental health. I couldn’t blame them—from their perspective, they were partly right.

Since gathering a technical team with their own equipment was proving difficult, I thought that going to a round of investors on my own would be an excellent idea. After all, besides having the capital to boost the project, they had a network of contacts that could fill that gap and possessed a more advanced strategic vision. Or so I believed.

It turned out they didn’t just echo the responses and arguments of the companies I had visited; they also added the issue of short-term return on investment. How could I convince financiers that the most significant metric of my project was the number of mountain rescues prevented? I couldn’t convince them that this project couldn’t be filmed with drones, either—they kept balancing their arguments with basic issues like flight regulations or nature reserve restrictions. Seeing that, I figured it was better not to mention the technical reasoning at all.

According to the entrepreneurship manual, the worst that could happen to me had already happened, even before starting. It was time to pivot, to enter a phase of reflection and decision-making. I could continue investing time and resources into finding a team and funding, I could accept what I had been told and quit, or I could seek a third way: lighten my load and do a “DIY” solo run.

The financial and technical “no” were already secured. Short-term viability seemed complicated, and my sanity was in question. What else could I lose? From that perspective, only one unknown remained: could a “low-cost” version be technically feasible using 360 technology, without going through Google?

There was only one way to find out.

The phone rang. A friend, a professional photographer, had gotten his hands on a cutting-edge 360-degree camera—an innovative, pocket-sized, and affordable model. It was exactly what I had been looking for.

By the time I received the camera, I had already downloaded a trial version of software I’d been tinkering with for a while, using spherical images found online.

As soon as I had the camera in my hands, I made an express excursion to Aralar, my favorite testing ground. I left so hurriedly that I didn’t even think about how I was going to carry the camera. I configured the automatic shooting parameters, raised my arm, and set off running with the camera held high. 30 images would be enough to start working with the software.

Along with the excitement of the first image upload came the first clash with reality. I had several problems, and they weren’t minor. The first had to do with leveling and orienting the images. It hadn’t even crossed my mind that a spherical image could be so nauseating if the horizon was tilted. The second was related to positioning on the map: it was completely nonexistent.

I had to find a way to level spherical images and insert metadata for positioning and north orientation to make a virtual route come to life. It wasn’t the best of starts, but once mounted on the editing software, it didn’t look as bad as it seemed.

After several attempts, I figured out how to insert exact positioning metadata into the photos, and the software (for the umpteenth time on a trial version) brought the first halfway decent test to life. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a reasonably simple way to handle a large volume of photos to fix the horizon leveling, so I approached it differently. I had to learn to walk in the mountains as straight as possible. I wouldn’t achieve perfect stabilization, but I would keep the camera’s horizontal axis within tolerable levels for post-production. And that’s what I did.

With the puzzle more or less solved, I had to move to the next level. I needed to test how well I could record a complete route, from the car to the summit.

The debut had to be the Txindoki—a nearby, iconic route that offered enough variety of terrain to put my biomechanical stabilization system to the test.

After a preliminary excursion to collect data and scout the terrain, I had to find a way to attach the camera to a backpack so that it would sit slightly above my head. An old backpack with a selfie stick tied on in some makeshift way would do for the occasion. The fine-tuning would come later.

I never imagined that recording with a pole above my head, in active stabilization mode, would turn out to be so painful. So much so that I wasn’t able to record the final stretch of the Txindoki due to leg cramps, and I ended up with my back literally shattered. I had to pass the backpack to my aita (my father) in order to finish the recording.

The pain faded away when I finished the first post-production work. The result was acceptable. I had hit on the right key. All that was left was to refine the method and see how far I could go with this technology.

It didn’t take me long to find a way to attach the pole to an electric bicycle that a good friend lent me, and I headed to my private testing ground. I now had my first mountain bike route.

I had to raise the stakes… by then, on each and every one of my outings to the mountains, even if I wasn’t recording, I had switched to biomechanical stabilization mode, and my body’s musculature was reacting. I could hold on longer and in more demanding conditions before the cramps kicked in.

Once I decided to take things to the next level, I had to bring this technology into more technical terrain. I needed an iconic peak, one that wasn’t just an easy trail to navigate and that offered a view from the summit where 360-degree imagery could truly shine.

We headed to the Picos del Infierno, but via the Garmo Blanco. On this route, I would see if my physical adaptation could hold up, and I needed to test whether the camera could function continuously through a constant power supply from an external battery, as the camera’s own battery wasn’t even close to providing the energy required to cover a route like this.

If this worked, besides longer and more complex routes, I would be able to tackle colder scenarios. Aware that low temperatures and batteries don’t get along particularly well, external power would be a critical factor for the project.

It didn’t just work; it also brought about the first problems derived from recording in those conditions, and, of course, the need to face critical situations during image capture with creative solutions. If you look down at the section between the Marmolera and the summit, you’ll see what I mean. There’s nothing like having to sharpen one’s wits.

All that was missing was to know if, with external power and by applying a control protocol to ensure image capture, we could face even more unfavorable conditions for the camera. So, with the arrival of winter, we loaded up our skis and headed to Portalet to record the first ski touring route up to Pico Canal Roya.

The project could now be multi-sport, covering all seasons of the year without sacrificing long and complex routes. Without realizing it, at that precise moment at Portalet, TreckView became the first platform in the world to bring immersive 360° continuity to high mountains, combining trekking, MTB, and ski touring.

The time had come to put everything on the line. The structure I had in my head began to take shape as I assembled the content on the website, ensuring that every single element that made up its architecture worked to perfection.

Once I had solved the integration problems for all the components and the navigation was fluid—especially for a home-grown, one-person project—I focused on creating a brand image, on building the site in such a way that I could optimize the workflow for adding new routes, and on integrating everything to ensure coherence.

The second week of October 2018, TreckView launched, 10 years after I had run into the Google car in Benasque and received the best ribbing of my life.

That launch was only the beginning of an evolution that would lead me to reach heights investors thought impossible. Years later, that same self-sufficient system, now with the help of family and friends, would allow us to sign an unprecedented international milestone: continuously recording all 43 stages of the Trans-Pyrenean Trail (GR11) on foot. With more than 15,500 photographs processed by hand, one by one, TreckView achieved the record for the longest 360° immersive continuous documented route on the planet. But the odyssey of those 800 kilometers carrying the pole, the family logistics, and the moments pushed to the limit along the entire mountain range truly deserve an article of their own, which we will recount later.

Now, almost 8 years after publishing the first route and 18 after having the first idea, it is inevitable to look back and remember everything lived and suffered, enjoyed and learned… A question comes to mind, one asked by someone very close to me who knew the ups and downs of the project and its intricacies, and what it had cost me to reach that first route:

-Is it really worth it for you?

…

-Don’t have the slightest doubt—I replied, flashing, as always, a half-smile.