I’m assuming by main renderer you’re referring to openstreetmap.org. If so, that site is designed for editor feedback, not for use by consumers. The concern should be if data consumers are ignoring additional tagging.
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No, but this one is a lost cause for the time being.
I guess your appeal goes to this issue? As far as usability of paths goes, there indeed are more things to consider than sac_scale or trail_visibility alone.
Perhaps the OSMF can come up with a comprehensive list of additional tags that consumers should take note of? I imagine kind of a quality seal - consumers honouring the list could get a “up to standards badge”.
OSMF doesn’t dictate anything regarding tagging, that’s up to the community.
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My question was about consumers of what the community tags, not about how the community should apply tags. I do not think that I suggested some kind of dictatorship, did I? If so, then how?
They don’t involve themselves in tagging at all, which is why they wouldn’t publish a list like that. Publishing that list is giving endorsement to those tags, which is not what the OSMF is for.
Edit: To add to this, in my opinion, the best thing for a data consumer to do when looking for relevant additional tags would be to utilise Taginfo.
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This is not a new idea and for example what the OSM-US trails working group has been working on (only talking about data consumers here), not to forget work by @woodpeck and others.
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When I wrote what I wrote, I wanted to point out, that the task put on the consumers might be a bit over the top, at least my experience tells me such. Maybe that is just me, I say of my selves, I ramble rather than hike, so that may be why I stumble on such curiosities like the path pictured above. After visiting the location, I’d say this is just a “This is where I walked the terrain” path. Obviously, taginfo remains shy of such a class.
@mods-general Perhaps splitting the topic at Alpinist routes marked as footpaths - #141 by Kiwl_trail might be useful, I have not much of an idea for the title, perhaps mapping and consuming subjective tags? Maybe others can come up with something more to the point?
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I would say the main reason for another category is that there is already a lot of mountaineering routes mapped out as I mentioned. Examples would be Wildspitze, Dom, Großvenediger and many other alpine routes and summits. I think there are a lot of good reasons either to map or not to map those routes.
In my understanding the whole point of the SAC hiking scale is that it is not necessary (<T4) or impossible (>T4) to use climbing gear while the routes are still at moderate difficulty (<II+). When the climbing becomes more technical other scales apply like the mountaineering scale (>PD+) or climbing scales (>III UIAA, 5.1 YDS, 3a French). What I meant by gear choice in the map is that a route on glaciated terrain requires crampons and only under best conditions (absolutely no snow on the glacier) no ice axe and ropes are required. For these routes the mountaineering scale exists. Usually these routes contain several challenges, from simple glacier walking (F-PD) to rock climbing (>PD) and ice climbing (>AD plus WI/AI scale for ice climbing). By making use of it, users would know: This is no longer hiking, it’s something different.
As I said there are good reasons not to print those routes. But as they’re already in the map I would suggest to describe and grade them accurately.
I would disagree here with you. It is widely used for alpine, easy sport and trad climbing in Germany and Austria. Hard sport climbing (above the 8th grade UIAA) is more often rated in French scale. Today in sport climbing grades, I and II are irrelevant and even third grade is unusual for a normal rock climbing setting. Nevertheless first to third grade are very important in mountaineering settings. (And maybe you confused French scale with US YDS scale? In YDS Rock climbing starts at 5.1, 4th class in YDS is something like T5/T6.)
The point of the SAC scale (and the mountaineering scale alike) is to show both sides of the term „risk“ — the chance of an incident to occur (eg climbing difficulty, rock conditions) as well as the consequences (eg exposure). They also take things like the overall duration and ease of retreat into consideration (more common in the mountaineering scale). „Real climbing“ in grade II is only concerned with the difficulty of the moves themselves. The second grade introduces three-point-technique, so you need three secure limbs to move one. If these moves involve pulling up in nearly vertical terrain, we get grade III. In reality it makes a great difference wether you make a second grade move on a grassy valley ground or if you make it at an exposed ridge on loose rock.
Also a lot of fatal incidents occur on fairly good paths traversing steep grass slopes. From only judging the path (especially on a satellite image) these passages would barely classify as T1, but as the expected consequence of bad surefootedness is likely death, something like T2 or even T3 is commonly used. The upper SAC grades take into account that the rock gets less and less stable (as is common for second grade due to the nature of the terrain). Unstable rock doesn’t only make for bad hand- and footholds but also for the inability to place gear for security as opposed to supposedly „harder“ sport climbing routes on compact rock, wearing climbing shoes. Back to the risk definition it means that a climbing passage of grade II on chossy rock with lots of exposure and mountaineering boots can be even more difficult and dangerous then a UIAA grade IV sport multipitch.
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No, I did not. I wrote what I wrote, because climbers here (Austria) (the ones I talked with) exclusively grade on the French scale and they do not bother with anything below French 5 because that is not climbing in their opinion.
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Yeah I think I tried to steer back to the original threads title… because I think it’s the more pressing issue then regional deviations in grading. It only took me a while to understand that my personal problem of the interpretation of the SAC scale on both sides of the map is part of a bigger issue.
That’s some interesting friends you have there. I know this kind of climbers too (mostly from here, Germany). I have to think of a Bonatti quote who said: „once climbing will be nothing but pure acrobatics“. I think that’s sport climbing and that’s fine. But I know one climber (my boss, actually) who climbs and drills sport climbing routes in 8th/9th grade, he reports that he’s afraid of such II/III graded routes on chossy rock. So I think it’s just two very different pairs of shoes.
But all the guide books I own and have had a look at from Austria and Germany (except for saxony) are graded in UIAA. That’s why I’m so persistent about UIAA.
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I am proud to have recently mapped bouldering routes that never reach above French 2 in Fontainebleau. My point here is that there are snobs in every practice, that I do not judge them, but that we are not mapping for them (or at least not only for them)
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Well, in practice, the difference is not that big. The wiki says that in areas that officially use SAC Scale, it should be used 1:1 (maybe splitting T1 into ‘strolling’ and ‘hiking’, but that does not have security implications). But in areas where SAC Scale is not used, the classification is up to the mappers anyway and so it will always be a bit subjective. (Thugh I bet that there are T4 routes somewhere that are less challenging than T3 routes elsewhere at least for some people even in places where the scale is officially used). Moreover, OSM has a separate tag for ‘trail_visibility’, which the original “official” SAC incorporates, so it does should not be reflected (or less reflected) in OSM SAC. Plus ‘sac_scale’ is also used outside of mountains (my favourite example is cliffy sea-side trails), where the original SAC is not used. But in practice the idea, as I understand is, that the difficulty level between OSM sac_scale and “official” SAC_scale should be the same.
I was mostly wenting about weird wording on the UIAA website. I think the grades make sense on their own, just the UIAA definition is too sparse and weridly worded, plus SAC scale or OSM (not sure which) also does not use it that well with regard to the definition. I think hte problem with UIAA is that “everybody knows” what I, II and III is, so people work with their mental model of it and not with the actual definition.
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I think openstreetmap not an exception 
Regarding “Here real climbing begins.” I do not think UIAA II is climbing in the sense of OSM climbing:=*
When the media reports mountain rescue calls, I always look at what openstreetmap data contains in the location. Today a big rescue was reported. Openstreetmap there only has mountain_hiking paths. Not familiar with the location, I looked at pictures, I seen some that make me consider OSM demanding_mountain_hiking. I looked at what hikr.org says: T3 sections on a T2 route. From the media report, these sections were at play. I do not think openstreetmap data played any role in this incident. The people most likely were not using it [1]. All this may say, due to where the people gave up: One grade different may turn a hike into a mountain rescue.
This was on orchestrated tour, perhaps the organizer did use openstreetmap data. Nobody will ever know. ↩︎
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I think that is exactly what I was getting at before. More experienced people know when to turn back even if the map says „well beneath your limits“. Lesser experienced people (I work at an outdoor retailer shop, I meet them every day) will often just pull through until they call for rescue or worse.
And there are cases that might even bring experienced mountaineers into a rescue situation: just imagine for an afternoon stroll you ascend a technical route up a mountain where you know you can’t reverse the moves without a rope. The descend is marked T4, so you’re looking at maximum second grade UIAA, usually secured by fixed ropes. You didn’t bring a rope, because of T4. Now imagine there was one mapper at play who forgot to mention an exposed 5m section of III+ scrambling. You might now find yourself in a somewhat precarious situation… Rescue by helicopter is usually covered by insurance in such cases, but I can imagine a clever lawyer at an insurance company might try to find out what led to this situation. (I know I’m exaggerating here)
If you’re interested I’ll attach two articles by the joint alpine clubs magazine mentioned before. The first one is a pdf in German, so non German speakers would have to utilize plain text translation.
This one is their take on OSM primarily, found here
The second one is about incidents where online route suggestions were at play, some of them based on tracks generated off of OSM routable paths found here
Aaah yeah, I get you now. And I think so too that it is hard to understand. Especially from a sport climbing perspective where most people will end up when researching UIAA grades. I fell for this too, before understanding that UIAA I-IV is not really a linear scale of the overall difficulty including the ability and reasonableness to place gear for protection.
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I think I’ll steal this for some sections and see how it goes. I’ve been avoiding adding path tags and mainly adding cairns (as there usually are some) to such places, or simply remembering that certain sections are walkable (that doesn’t work so well, though).
I actually do add sport=climbing tag to those, if it’s an interesting ridge traverse. (I like being able to turn on Climbing POIs and investigate an area on the phone like that)
Edit: Ah, I didn’t realize this was hypothetical.
wiki.
In the area of my local knowledge, I know some OSM paths that are merely GPS dumps of people walking/scrambling/climbing UIAA I and up terrain. There is a continuous flow of OSM notes that say “There is no path there” or that say “You could just walk anywhere there”. I say terrain, because it is fully up to the person out there to find their way, the one that best suits their abilities and prerogatives.
I think there should be a better way in OSM to cope with that, rather than just deleting such “invisible/recommended/&c. paths”.
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We have started a series of actions in France, with as much collaboration with local actors as possible. But at some point we’ll also need map developers to collaborate. There’s also the question of of OpenTopoMap which is popular and not updated for several years now.
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