Estimating Difficulty of a Given Section of a Route

I want to calculate the grade of a steep section of a route - see attached screenshot showing the steepest section of the route with a broken horizontal arrow - so as to help me estimate how difficult it would be for me to hike the section ahead of time. For this, I would need both the elevation at each end of the section and length of the section.

While I hover the cursor over the graph, it does give me the elevation but not its distance from the starting point on X-axis, which is required to calculate the length of the section. With both values known (elevation difference and length of the section), it would be easy to use a scientific calculator to calculate the grade of the section or simply use (Elevation Difference/Lenght of Section) to indicate how steep the section is.

Could you update the application to provide this value? It would be even better if the application could display the gradient between two selected points on the route.

Portman.Roland

September 24, 2018 00:20

My recommendation would be an option to color code the drawn route with the grade of the elevation change.

Yellow 2%, green 4%, blue 6%, purple 8%, red10+% (these are both UP and DOWN).

That way a hiker could quickly tell when a section is going to be difficult.

Roland

scarcliffe

November 14, 2018 18:06

I like your idea, but lets keep it pretty simple like Ski trails

green easy, blue more difficult, black difficult

I would really like to be able to add this to my tracks, but of course elevation change is only one factor to consider, other include footing, is it a shelf trail with steep drop-offs , weather (rainy or dry), health and experience of participant

in the end the level of difficulty is pretty subjective, and elevation is not really the only answer, and the final decision about level is up to each participantl

Estimating Difficulty of a Given Section of a Route

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