[pct-l] New PCT Website!
Mark Jernigan
footslogger03 at yahoo.com
Mon Mar 5 21:20:37 CST 2007
Having been lured into the elevation profiles during my AT thru I know only too well how subtle and even significant grade changes can be "smoothed" by the scaling factor.
That said, elevation profiles provide invaluable information regarding terrain trend between various points along the trail.
I applaud Bearcant's efforts and accomplishments !!
Footslogger
Pea Hicks <phix at optigan.com> wrote:
Paul Mitchell wrote:
> Great work! That's a really effective visualization tool.
>
> I'm inclined to think it'd be a good idea to print out each section and
> bring it along!
while i agree that this is a wonderful visualization, the only thing
that's still ultimately frustrating is that, since this graph is based
on the data book points, there's still plenty of instances where there
are hidden climbs not represented in the data. i love the data book for
its conciseness, but every single day on the pct i had situations where
i'd look at the data and think "oh yay, i've got an easy grade for the
next 3 miles" only to find one or more hidden climbs embedded within
that 3 miles with no data points to represent those elevation changes.
now, you would be right to point out that it's my own fault for relying
too heavily on the data book, especially after having learned this
lesson every day for months on the trail, but somehow i STILL managed to
be fooled by this up to the very last day.
just to pull one random example out of countless possible examples, have
a look at oregon section e on bearcant's page. in between "horse lake
trail" and "camelot lake," there's a very significant climb to koosah
peak which takes you much higher before descending to camelot lake. for
some reason this peak is not included in the data book- why, i have no
clue. at any rate, if you just look at the graph generated by the data,
you see a direct climb to camelot lake. but in reality, you're climbing
up and over a significant mountain here.
here's a snip from my trailjournal:
********
Theres definitely an art to reading between the lines of the data.
Basically, the higher the gradient (positive or negative) and/or the
shorter the distance between two landmarks, the more reliable the
gradient info will be. For instance, if you have two landmarks that are
.2 miles apart, and the gradient is 5.4, its a pretty safe bet that
youll have a moderately steep descent for .2 miles. BUT on the other
hand, if the landmarks are 3.5 miles apart, and the gradient is listed
as 1.2, this almost certainly DOES NOT mean youve got 3.5 miles of
easy, smooth ascent! Such a thing is pretty rare on the PCT. Most likely
there are one or more hidden climbs or descents in that 3.5 miles. The
gradient column only reflects the net ascent between the two points.
********
what would be really great would be to have a truly continuous elevation
graph of the entire trail, with the data points placed along it, so that
you can see all the climbs/descents accurately. ideally it would be best
to have such a graph at the bottom of every data book page, which would
encompass all the data points on that page. i actually requested this
for the next data book revision, but it's highly doubtful it will come
to pass. it might have to be a diy project, using elevation profiles
generated by topo mapping software...
girlscout
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