Summit Labs Expeditions
The Ascent, lived.
Summit Labs takes its name from a climb. When founder Rob Neal heads up a real mountain — this June, Mount Adams, roped to his longtime climbing partner Mike Turner — the same discipline behind our client work tracks every step of it, live. Here's why we build in the open, and how the tracker works.
Climb-day signal
Mount Adams live status
This panel is the readable front door. The external tracker carries the live map, but the operating state should be obvious here before anyone clicks away.
- Current status
- Tracker standby
- Live route feed opens for the Mount Adams climb window.
- Last satellite ping
- Awaiting first fix
- Garmin positions appear on the tracker once the rope team is moving.
- Update cadence
- ~2 minutes
- Polling cadence during active movement, subject to satellite visibility.
- Signal stale?
- No — pre-climb standby
- Stale handling begins after the first climb-day satellite point lands.
Stale signal handling
Silence is handled, not hidden.
If a fresh satellite point does not arrive for 15 minutes, the tracker keeps the last known position visible and marks the feed stale instead of pretending the team is still moving.
A stale ping does not automatically mean an emergency. Terrain, weather, tree cover, battery mode, or satellite visibility can all pause updates.
Longer silence is watched by the safety timer and escalated to the right emergency contacts outside the public page.
Milestone timeline
The climb state should read in one scan.
These are the public states followers should see before, during, and after the June 4 ascent.
- 01Standby
Tracker standby
Countdown, route context, and safety rules are visible before the first satellite point.
- 02Next
At trailhead
The first confirmed inReach fix marks the rope team at the South Climb start.
- 03Queued
Ascending
Elevation, remaining vertical, and last known position update against the route.
- 04Queued
Summit
Summit status publishes only when the feed crosses the summit threshold.
- 05Queued
Descending
The page shifts from progress-to-summit to progress-back-to-safety.
- 06Queued
Safely down
The tracker closes the loop when the rope team is back down and accounted for.
12,276'
Mount Adams summit
6,676'
Vertical gain
~2 min
Live update cadence
June 4
Next ascent
The track record
Mount Adams isn't the first.
Behind it are a 14,000-foot glaciated volcano, a long-trail section on foot, and a lot of steep tropical terrain — the climbs that made the metaphor honest.
Mount Shasta, California
Two summits with longtime climbing partner Mike Turner — North and West Face routes on a 14,000-foot glaciated volcano.
Appalachian Trail, Georgia
The Georgia section on foot — the trail's southernmost stretch.
Oahu, Hawaii
Many of the island's steep, demanding ridge trails.
Costa Rica
Steep, punishing jungle trails.
From the field
Swipe / scroll · tap to enlarge
Why we built it
A hobby and a craft, on the same rope.
Mountaineering isn't a metaphor we reached for in a deck — it's how Rob actually spends his time off the clock. The company name, the engagement model, the way we talk about preparation and judgment: all of it comes from the mountain.
So when there's a climb on the calendar, we don't keep it separate from the business. We put it where people can find it. Client, peer, or simply curious — you can follow along, and watch the same operating philosophy we'd bring to your work applied to something with real exposure.
How it works
The tracker is the proof.
There's no off-the-shelf app behind this. The live tracker is a small system Rob designed and built end to end — scoped, shipped, and run the same way we'd handle a client engagement. It has three jobs.
Track
Satellite breadcrumbs, captured
A Garmin inReach fires a position from the mountain — no cell signal required. A Cloudflare Worker polls for a fresh fix every couple of minutes and writes each one to a small database, so the whole ascent leaves a durable record.
Highlight
Coordinates, made legible
A state machine turns raw fixes into something you can read at a glance — countdown, on the mountain, summited, safely down. Elevation, vertical gained, and distance to the summit update against the route as milestones are reached.
Communicate
The right people, kept informed
Followers opt in once and get a note at the moments that matter — trailhead, summit, safely down — generated from the same feed. A dead-man's switch watches for a long silence and escalates to emergency contacts. Nothing to babysit.
Under the hood — Garmin inReach · Cloudflare Workers + D1 · scheduled polling · automated email · a self-checking safety timer.
Designed, built, and run by one person — the Summit Labs way.
Follow along
Next up: Mount Adams.
The next ascent is Mount Adams — 12,276 feet, Washington's second-highest — on June 4, 2026. Rob climbs it with Mike Turner — his longtime climbing partner and his partner on Client Check, who owns Greater Oak Contracting in Athens, GA. The two share one rope and one satellite feed, so the tracker shows where the rope team is on the route, how much is left, and every milestone as it happens. Between climbs, it holds the countdown and the record of the last one.
Step by step
Free to follow, nothing to install.
No account, no app — open the tracker and you're in. Here's the whole experience, start to finish.
01
Open the tracker
One link, no account, nothing to install. The live tracker opens in your browser and shows where Rob and Mike are on the route, their current elevation, and how much is left to the top.
02
Watch the four stages
Base Camp, Map the Route, The Ascent, The Summit — the same four stages behind every client engagement, lighting up one by one against the real profile of the South Spur.
03
Get the milestones
Add your email once and a short note lands at the moments that matter — leaving Base Camp, reaching the summit, and safely back down. No spam, and you can unsubscribe anytime.
04
Bring someone along
Share the tracker with anyone who'd want to watch. Client, friend, or simply curious — following the climb is open to all of them, free.
The same discipline, for your business
We build for clients the way we build for the mountain.
Preparation, an honest read on the terrain, the right tools, steady measured progress. If that's how you'd want a technology partner to operate, that's exactly what an engagement looks like.