Backcountry / Skitour -- Survey, how do you map?

General talk Tagging general discussion
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When I work on styling our ski slopes on OpenSnowMap.org, I’m always uncomfortable when it comes to back-country skiing and how am I suppose to interpret the tags. Plus I’m a cross-country skier, so what do I know ?

Nowadays, it is not uncommon for ski resorts to let a few pistes un-groomed so their skiers gets to know the fresh snow experience, and I’m told some resorts also ratrack ascents to very popular skitours.

This doesn’t help to differentiate practices, also because it is a field where mapping a particular itinerary could be considered border-line or too subjective for Openstreetmap.
This is why I’d like to run a survey among mappers to better understand how it is done right now.

Maybe from this we can learn something from each other and end up with a better documentation.

Now, your turn:
How do you map …

  • A well-known (specialized maps, topos, …) alpine skitour ascent you ride under your own liability
  • A well-known (specialized maps, topos, …) alpine skitour descent you ride under your own liability
  • A well-known (specialized maps, topos, …) unprepared cross-country-skiing itinerary (rather flat terrain, large nordic skis sufficient)
  • An official, secured and patrolled downhill piste shown in the resort skimap, however unprepared (ungroomed) on purpose
  • A skitour ascent, ungroomed, but managed and secured by a resort
  • A skitour descent ungroomed, but managed and secured a by a resort
  • A groomed skitour ascent, managed, secured and patrolled by a resort
  • A ski-mountaineering event trail
  • A well known run you saw a freeride competition video on the web
  • Your backyard favorites runs you share with a half dozen of friends
  • Something else ?

You may respond here or on wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Piste_Maps

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  • A well-known (specialized maps, topos, …) unprepared cross-country-skiing itinerary (rather flat terrain, large nordic skis sufficient)

This I’d map piste:type=nordic + piste:grooming=backcountry, along with piste:difficulty=(based on the wiki technical description for nordic pistes, split ways).

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I use type=skitour for the ascending tracks. Those are taken on skies with skins going uphill. I use type=downhill for the downhill runs. And the grooming tag is set accordingly. So for an unmaintained run where powder is found, grooming=backcountry is used. Hope this helps

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One piece of information is for a track skied with xc skies with no skins, type=nordic is indicated. For a track going mostly uphill and dedicated to access downhill terrain type=skitour is indicated.

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Load GPX into editor, put aerial in background, do NOT download any OSM data, draw a single way from start to end, tag it, upload.

piste:difficulty=…
piste:grooming=backcountry
piste:name=…
piste:type=skitour

Descent will not get mapped.

PS: A note on “well-known” - I never have seen a topo, a paper map provider has skitours marked, the local newspaper weekly reports one. Skitours are known by name of the top. Locals know the hamlet where to start. On well-known tours there is always a track (trace?) to follow, map not needed much. Some starting places have transceiver checkers (40 or so in the province.) Well-known tours always avoid wildlife sanctuaries!

A note on mapping: Before upload, check against OSM-Carto; repair some obvious errors, add missing POIs…

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A well-known (specialized maps, topos, …) alpine skitour ascent you ride under your own liability

piste:type=skitour, piste:grooming=backcountry, patrolled=no

A well-known (specialized maps, topos, …) alpine skitour descent you ride under your own liability

piste:type=downhill, piste:grooming=backcountry, patrolled=no

A well-known (specialized maps, topos, …) unprepared cross-country-skiing itinerary (rather flat terrain, large nordic skis sufficient)

piste:type=nordic, piste:grooming=backcountry.

An official, secured and patrolled downhill piste shown in the resort skimap, however unprepared (ungroomed) on purpose

piste:type=downhill, piste:grooming=backcountry, operator=Resort Name, patrolled=yes

A skitour ascent, ungroomed, but managed and secured by a resort

piste:type=skitour, piste:grooming=backcountry, operator=Resort Name, patrolled=yes/no

A skitour descent ungroomed, but managed and secured a by a resort

piste:type=downhill, piste:grooming=backcountry, operator=Resort Name, patrolled=yes/no

A groomed skitour ascent, managed, secured and patrolled by a resort

piste:type=skitour, piste:grooming=classic, operator=Resort Name, patrolled=yes

A ski-mountaineering event trail

If it is only used as a trail during a short event I probably wouldn’t map it. If it is well known and used all season, piste:type=skitour and the appropriate piste:grooming tag.

A well known run you saw a freeride competition video on the web

Unclear. Need more information.

Your backyard favorites runs you share with a half dozen of friends

Probably wouldn’t map the secret stash :wink:

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Here in western north america there are many ski runs left ungroomed at ski resorts. Usually but not always these runs will develop moguls. The tag piste:grooming = backcountry is a bit unnatural for this use case, because in the united states and canada “backcountry” means “no ski patrol / avalanche control”, which really has nothing to do with grooming.

I think the distinction between patrolled = yes and patrolled = no is very important around here since there is a lot of avalanche terrain. However the rendering engines like opensnowmap, openskimap, gaia, etc generally don’t make this distinction.

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I agree. The piste:grooming values for downhill runs feel awkward. I think they are basically supposed to mean:

  • classic: standard coduroy grooming
  • moguls: intentionally created moguls, or almost always has naturally developed moguls
  • backcountry: ungroomed

If I had created the tag I’d have made the values groomed, moguls, and ungroomed. No sense confusing things with the backcountry connotation.

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My touring experience is mostly in the Alps outside of resorts, and I haven’t done much mapping partially because IIRC last time I looked for guidance there was very little. With that background and reading what’s said here’s my opinion.

I’d only map somewhat well-known tours. You can ski so many things, but looking at a map you want to know the common stuff - how to approach or escape your adventure if you do something weird or just do a classic tour. I think an example of this are the Swiss ski-touring topo maps where they do this.

I’d tag piste:type = skitour but I don’t think I could be bothered with tagging the grooming at all. Ungroomed implies usually something resort-based that’s not groomed and thus turns into a mogul field. If there is a section on a cattrack because of a hut supply or so then I think that should be mapped as some kind of track and not as a skitour. Similar if a tour starts or ends on a piste - just let the piste track take over there. If you need to link a tour together from different segments then maybe a relation is better?

Most ski tours can be ascended and descended. Some are only decent but those are the exception and there’d I’d expect to mark oneway = yes.

Looking at ski-tour maps there usually are two kind of lines: solid and dashed. The latter indicates difficult terrain usually, this could be many things and you’d be looking for other clues on the map or look for other literature. Can range from “often not much snow”, to “difficult crevasses” to “climbing a rocky ridge”. Some kind of way to indicate those tricky sections - and get them rendered - would be nice.

A way to tag the “typical” duration would be nice.

Lastly it would be nice to be able to also tag the difficulty level of a tour (outside of the tricky sections mentioned above). The SAC (Swiss Alpine Club) have a well known scale and most others in the alps seems similar-ish that they have a single grade in 5 to 8 steps that includes some guidance on steepness, exposure, narrow or other technical bits etc.

I’d be great to have some page with dedicated guidance on how to tag ski tours!

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To be fair I wouldn’t mind using entirely different tags from piste:*. Someone looking at a piste map in a resort should probably not be shown skitours. And using “piste” for something that has nothing to do with pistes is a bit odd.

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On the wiki, the piste:difficulty definition for piste:type=skitour is exactly that.

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Skitour fits fine here Key:piste:type - OpenStreetMap Wiki

When the descent gets mapped though, automated consumers might have problems telling downhills apart. The survey brought up the operator and patrolled attributes. Will that be good enough?

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It seems to me that yes, it should be good enough.

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oh nice! didn’t realise. so that part exist already then. thanks!

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So sounds like most things I was wondering about already exist more or less. No reason not to map more tours.

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These attributes rarely set here. There is one more indicator, when a backcountry downhill is part of a piste type site relation, it is likely in a resort, patrolled and has an operator. Might need a bit overpass turbo to affirm, should not be hard though.

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One attribute I see in the data is often piste:difficulty=freeride.
I wonder if it is equivalent to “piste:type=downhill + piste:grooming=backcountry”.

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Browsing with overpass gives very unconclusive results. At least, I learned, that there is one such in my hometown - Way: 587946839 | OpenStreetMap - it is even publicly announced by the resort as such. Other resorts near by also advertise freeriding possibilities.

Freeriding can be a reason to go on skitour, but obviously, one can freeride from the cable car station just as well.

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I ski almost exclusively alpine. In the fall, I always try to map the piste map as best as possible in the ski resorts where I will be next.
The ski routes typically indicated in yellow / orange in the piste map cause me difficulties. (Which are marked with diamond shaped signs on the slope).

Because these are not official slopes and are not groomed by the Pistenbully, I would map them as piste:difficulty=freeride and piste:grooming=backcountry.

But for freeride the wiki description doesn’t quite fit (Why does the slope have to be 50-55 degrees for freeride?) and it seems to me that grooming backcountry should only be used for ski touring, since it is shown on the OpenSnowMap with the circles for ski touring and not for alpine skiing.
Why is that?

I can’t map the completely free off-piste trails, since I don’t ski there and don’t know them.

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Because otherwise, you would get stuck in hips deep powder :wink: But yes, a bit less should be fine for knee deep powder just as well. 60 degrees is practically a wall. Consequently, there never will be much snow there :wink: OSM wiki seems to be addressing world class elite freeride skiers, that jump down rocky terrain. 30+ degrees will be good enough in many conditions to have fun.

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