A couple of months ago I started gathering data to map climbing sites I’m visiting (mostly sport climbing). Since I’m not convinced my approach is actually good I wanted to ask how others are doing it.
Here’s what I’m currently doing:
Use a GPS (Garmin eTrex 32x) to track the path to and along the site
Mark routes as points in the GPS (with the name if possible)
Take photos of the wall (if possible) to draw topos on openclimbing.org
My main issues are that the GPS is not accurate enough and I tend to forget where the routes on the wall are.
The points in the GPS tend to end up in a random spread around the site. Usually I make sure routes are kept in the right order and roughly where they should be relative to the other features that are mapped on the site. Is there a better way to do this?
For the topos I’m thinking of bringing an iPad and drawing a sketch of the routes directly on the foto on-sight. I don’t know whether that works, as I have yet to try it out.
I’m mostly looking for tips and tricks on how to gather the data and make use of it when returning home.
When I go climbing I don’t map, but here are some ideas!
Taking some time to do a walk along the whole crag, in one go, with a 360° camera (or another camera if you don’t have a 360° one) for Panoramax and Mapillary could help to get bearings, even if the GPS isn’t super accurate. To remember where the routes are, I’d then do a second pass taking some form of notes. A short video where you point out the route and say its name and grade could work, in combination with the walk-through photos.
I almost always record tracks while approaching/climbing via OSMAnd on my phone. While the accuracy isn’t great, it’s usually enough to help me identify the general location of climbs relative to the rock face. Depending on how detailed the areal imagery is, I might be able to identify particular ledges, chimneys, and spires that I remember from being there in person.
Here’s an example with 4 different days of climbing in JOSM and the routes I drew based on them:
I also take a lot of photos for topos as well, especially for routes that aren’t well documented yet. The photos themselves are geotagged in my phone and I note the route name (from my guidebook) right after taking the photo.
I do the same. I’ve tried to plot a heatmap of the point cloud to get the location more accurately, but I don’t have anything that works well and is easy to use. I was thinking of writing a script to smooth/lowpass/Kalman filter the GPX file, too.
But in general I just keep notes on Osmand while I’m at the crag, and then look at the point cloud, Strava Heatmap, and USGS LIDAR imagery (both of which I’ve also set up inside Osmand) and estimate where the crag is. Usually close enough.
When I’m directly at the crag where I’m climbing, I usually know which route I’m climbing. Typically, I create a new node directly on https://openclimbing.org using climbing=route_bottom at the spot where the route is located (long tap on the map and click “add a place”). I try to walk around the whole crag/area to get a sense of the layout. I gradually mark the routes located at the start and end of the crag, and possibly some in between—especially if the crag isn’t in a single line. This gives me a good idea of where to map the remaining routes later when I’m at my computer.
I also take lots of photos, sometimes including the route names on the rock, so I know which routes I’ve photographed.
At home, I transfer the photos to my computer and drag them into the JOSM editor to see where they were taken (photos usually contain this EXIF data). Then I finish mapping the remaining routes and fix any that have inaccurate coordinates.
When I map in the Czech Republic, I can use a relief map in JOSM/iD or on https://openclimbing.org to check the accuracy of the route placement
After that, I upload selected photos to Wikimedia Commons and draw in the routes I can confidently identify. Ideally, I like to revisit the area after mapping the routes to verify the accuracy.
