In Nederland, land owners can use there own signage to express their rules on their property, and (if clear enough) that’s legally binding. So it’s not required to use the official traffic signs on private land.
1 Like
In Austria it is not easy to prohibit walking in the woods on and off paths. We got granted a legal easement. The signs around those mtb_singletracks resemble hazard signs more than traffic signs. Nevertheless, mappers mark them foot=no, and I think that is fine.
BTW: All routers on the OSM website use them in their bicycle profiles, OpenStreetMap – Whom to tell about mtb:scale?
PS: Apparently in Germany even pedal-cycling cannot be easily forbidden in the woods - Bundeswaldgesetz: MTB-Community kann aufatmen | DIMB
4 posts were split to a new topic: Correlation between mtb:scale and sac_scale
You say in that issue that S4 is T4 but actually the wiki says S5 is T4 (S6 is T5-T6). The mapping between the scales is not very straightforward anyway, as different things are primary, I think. For hiking, exposure/danger is the most important thing. So a path over a scree field down in a valley would be easily T2 or T3 but could be S5-S6 (based on the wiki description, I am a hiker, not biker). For MTB, the eveness of the surface sounds very important, which is not such a biig concern for sac_scale.
Basede on the pictures alone, I would say the picutres in the mtb_scale wikipage are at most T3, and S5 is probably easier than S4. The textual descriptions are more important in my opinion (which also holds for sac_scale where the pictures are not great I think).
Yes, I came to the same conclusion later:
However, cannot any conclusions be taken? Like S4-6 meaning at least T3 or something? And S2-3meaning at least T2? Depends on which side of T1/T2 debate regarding the middle picture here: Key:sac_scale - OpenStreetMap Wiki one falls.
On the other hand, anything somewhat hard for hikers like T4-T6 will invariably be S5 or S6 or beyond the S scale no?
In my eyes, these are very good pictures. T2 and T3 about rough terrain, T4 about use of hands, T5 T6 gets steeper. The T6 one I’d term use of hands for comfort 
Of note – the only picture showing a path is T1 one – this looks similar to the S0 one to me.
The S1 picture and text already have too much loose rocks in there for me to comfortably tag sac_scale=hiking there. And for me this should also not be recommended by a foot router that aims for the general populace.
The picture above I once used for a poll in German category: Whether that shows sac_scale hiking or mountain_hiking. Most went with hiking, because there are no mountains there and because what else other than hiking would you want to do there.
Well, for T2, the description says “Terrain is steep in places and may pose fall hazards.” The picture is of a flat terrain with a ford (!). I would probably still classify that as T1.
For T3, “some portions of a route might be exposed, you might need to use hands, there is some danger of falling”. The picture is of a not so sleep terrain, where you would probably not use hands (you would need to bend your back), looks more like T2 to me. (it fits the description of scree/talus though).
Now for T4, especially the first picture does not look exposed and use of hands fits more T3 then T4, the second picture is still better, but I would say it is somewhere between T3/T4.
For T5, the first picture looks like T4 (in terms of exposure and use of hands, that is not climbing there). Now the second picture looks like T5, only there is an iron rope, which points more to T3.
Fro T6, well, I guess those are the best, but people there are still scrambling, so one could argue for T5 too.
TL;DR I think the pictures do not match the textual descriptions and are in general one grade lower than they are classified.
Of course, the pictureswere contributed by somebody who participatedin creating the scale, so I can just misunderstand it. It is just that my reading of the text does not correspond to my reading of the pictures.
An aside from the main conversation, but please link these references! One thing that the Discourse authors got spectacularly right was the ease of adding links - just highlight the word to hyperlink, and paste. As an example, someone searching the OSM wiki cold for “S6” gets this list. I’m guessing that you didn’t mean one of those.
I put the link to the specific text (for Chrome based browsers only) to that post now. However, I linked to the wiki article in question in my previous post and my reference to the previous commenter about S4 being T4 was a reply to the link they posted directly above my reply, so I think it was not that hard to get from context (after all, they corrected their comment on Github as I now see :-)).
Edit: Could the part of the debate about mtb:scale be divided into a separate topics? If we arrive at some agreement about some possible inferences, it wouldbe put to the wiki.
After reading the definitions back and forth, it seems to me that a resonable assumption is
S4 and higher is probably at least T3.
S3 is probably T2 (but probably not higher).
S2 and lower is no higher than T2, quite possibly T1 (so no assumption should be taken, only possibly in reverse case should some router decide not to route over paths without sac_scale for fear ofthem being too difficult).
It should always be recommended to add both mtb:scale and sac_scale and point out that these assumptions are mostly correct, but not alway.
Right, so following down that rabbit hole…
The wiki page link is to a table entry for mtb:scale=6, which doesn’t have an “STS equivalent” entry in it, but it’s presumably more than the one above, 5. That links to https://www.singletrail-skala.de/s5 , which we had no idea about, until you explained it.
where both modes of transport are relevant, that absolutely makes sense.
1 Like
Yes please, was also going to suggest that. These threads are starting to get cluttered with lots of different topics.
1 Like
No wonder – It is about consuming highway=path.
7 Likes
I observe some of this regularly. Not really edit-wars, but sac_scale tag fiddling. I lean to the pictures, others lean to hikr.org which seems to lean more to the language, as you read it. The latest revision of the SAC hiking scale in 2023 also made upper grade hiking eat into mountaineering (Hochtouren) territory. Nevertheless, the openstreetmap sac_scale is based on an older revision, the one where the pictures were made.
I used to say, mountain_hiking is, when you have to watch your step and lift your legs – looking at the picture in the wiki table I reword that: mountain_hiking is, when you have no trodden path in front of you, but you still can keep the hands in the pockets of your trousers.
BTW: outdooractive.com in their paid plan does not use openstreetmap ways (in my area it uses BEV – our local OS ordinance survey – ways) while it still uses openstreetmap sac grades on these ways – they must somehow map one map onto the other. Seems there is no other data source to get geo-located sac scale grading from apart from openstreetmap?
PS: Curious as I am, I like to ask people to have a look at their screen to learn what map they use. In case it is outdooractive, which layer is active: The free plan or the paid plan? And not, because they are cheapskates.
Could @mods-general please split the posts in this thread starting from Consuming highway=path, Take 2 - #83 by Hungerburg into a separate thread called ‘Correlation between mtb:scale and sac_scale’ (or similar)
2 Likes
Ha, and there is even a subthread from Consuming highway=path, Take 2 - #89 by Hungerburg
that could be called “Are wiki pictures for sac_scale appropriate”
(if only Discourse allowed partial post splitting:
How to split only a part of an existing post into a new topic? - feature - Discourse Meta )
The topic #83 is about reminding routers to use mtb:scale in their bicycle profiles. Which is fully within path topic.
I’d never ever try to correlate mtb and mountain hiking scale. I also never questioned whether pictures for sac_scale in the wiki are appropriate, that was also somebody else; I just stated my opinion, that they are.
The question: Key mtb:scale useful for pedestrian routing? might merit a separate topic. I suggest starting afresh, perhaps quoting from here what is relevant. No mods needed, Discourse offers “Copy Quote” when highlighting text.
Whether it’s related to path or not is not the issue. It’s a topic that can easily be split off to make this thread more readable and also help the discussion of that topic be more focused. Talking about 10 different topics (even if they are related) in one thread (or worse, in three threads with significant overlap) just leads to unfocused discussions.
2 Likes