Comment by ijustlovemath
2 years ago
You can tell the grade of a trail by doing Route To / Route From and selecting the walking option. After computing the route it shows you a fairly accurate elevation profile, as well as the length and total elevation gains/losses.
If you're using imperial units, you can also quickly estimate difficulty by doing the following:
- take the total elevation change, in hundreds of feet, eg 900ft = 9 * 100ft
- take the total distance, in tenths of a mile, eg 2.1 mi = 21 * .1 mi
- divide the elevation by the length and convert to a percentage: 9/21 ~ 43%
- grades are like so:
0-40%: relatively easy
40-70%: moderately big elevation, may be hard to sustain
70-100%: steep terrain, may involve some scrambling
>100%: very steep, technical terrain. Sometimes involves ladders or a static line in particularly steep sections
For example, there's a pretty lengthy trail near me called Shining Creek, that's very sustained, but I wouldn't call it steep. It's got 2300ft of elevation change over 3.9mi, which corresponds to a 58% steepness, aka the upper end of a moderately difficulty hike if sustained.
The elevation profile is great, for sure, but I meant more like...difficulty, rather than grade? I don't know the exact word to use, but sometimes you have well used, well marked trails and other times you have a "trail" that maybe gets used a few times a year and is more like a choose your own adventure with a rock cairn or two every couple hundred meters if you are lucky.
Ah, I see! I'm not sure if OSM data can have that information, but it would be great! Some kind of bushwhack out of 10 rating?
OSM does have that data, and I've noticed that mapy.cz takes it into account. There are sac_scale [1] and smoothness keys [2]
1. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:sac_scale
2. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:smoothness
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I think Komoot uses openstreetmap and is a little more hiking oriented, that might be useful to you.
It does not really say if any areas are exposed though. You can have near flat elevation but a very exposed path.
There's a topo layer in Organic! Close lines means (potentially) lots of exposure. That's not a silver bullet, though, as sometimes the topo shows nothing special, but when you get there you can have some exposure. For the cliffs in my area, there's also different shading and a line with triangles poking out in the direction of the fall line. So as long as you're hiking in places that are somewhat popular, you will have this extra info to rely on.
Doing true exposure on a per-segment basis would mean a new key I think, not to mention how much additional data this would require for the maps. If you're worried about the terrain to the point of needing highly detailed topo maps, it's probably better to get one of the many such maps in AllTrails (though the app is rather clunky)
As with all things outdoors, technology will only ever get you so far. Situational awareness and emergency preparedness are skills you should have if you're going somewhere you've never been before. Always prepare for more than you expect, and if you're not sure that you're prepared once you get to somewhere sketchy, it's always best to turn back.