As is becoming almost a tradition, here is another picture to vote on for sac_scale:
- mountain_hiking
- demanding_mountain_hiking
- alpine_hiking
0
voters
Some more pictures of the same spot:
To me it is obvious that my wife is using her hands, but is it āfor balanceā or āto advanceā?
so long as it is not to swimā¦
2 Likes
More seriously, the difference between āto advanceā and āto balanceā can be difficult to determine when you go down instead of up a rocky slope. I am tempted to add a notion of coordination between hands and body posture to disambiguate, and here I feel my hips twist just by looking at the picture.
So far, demanding_mountain_hiking gets the majority of the votes. Iām wondering what the motivation is of those who voted mountain_hiking?
The section pictured was preceded by a part where we had to climb onto a few big rocks with our knee first (too high to directly step on) so I tagged that part as alpine_hiking. However we perceived the pictured part to be more difficult.
On the other hand, if we hadnāt cared so much about keeping our feet dry, we could have walked through the water and it would have been hiking 
Oh. Nobody told you about the flesh-eating beasts in the water?
2 Likes
The combination of stones, rope overhead, rucksack and wall makes it tricky, I suppose (disclaimer: I am the only one to have voted for alpine_hiking, on the ground of difficulty more than danger)
Upon consideration, even though I went for ādemandingā, I would be ok with lower opiton too - one can just very easily advance by fording. The exit after the ford indicates ādemanding_mountain_hikingā more actually.
I also added the results and the picture to the wiki, thanks!
I think it is most useful as an example of how strongly a sac_scale valuation can vary depending on the way you look at the descriptions of the values and on whether you just have a photo to judge or have actual experience of using the path.
Didnāt get to vote but I would go with demanding_mountain_hiking as well. Leaning more towards mountain_hiking than alpine_hiking
it might need some balancing but you have a guide rope and danger is low.
Also needs the tag safety:rope=yes
And ford=stepping_stones
Thatās the case for any of the many tags that rely donāt rely on objective measurements.
is this trail_visibility good or medium? Is this surface quality bad or horrible?
I kindaike the note in the wiki regarding this topic
This tag is subjective: where one might see hiking, another might see mountain_hiking; however, disagreements by more than one grade are much rarer.
Itās also especially tricky since sometimes itās just the shortest bit of section on a long easy trail, that might be a bit more difficult.
see https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:sac_scale#Granularity for that.
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Well. I walked it in spring 2022, so at least some of us have the experience :-).
Actually Iām against showing this on the wiki: it adds to my confusion because I canāt see how this could be mountain_hiking when it obviously shows āuse of handsā. Iām afraid it adds to the confusion of other mappers as well. We should only add it after it has been made clear why some see this as mountain_hiking
I added discussion of this on the wiki, anybody feel free to improve on what I put there. Is it making it clearer, @rhhs ? I think people who see T2 mainly see no exposure.
sac_scale is trying to evaluate several parameters at the same time: technical difficulty and exposure, and to some extend also steepness. They usually change in parallel, but there are cases like this one where they donāt. Here there is technical difficulty without exposure or steepness. Should we then only look at technical difficulty (my preference) or do we assign an easier sac_scale value due to the lack of exposure (and steepness)? Maybe this is worth starting a new thread about.