I am trying tag some new winter routes and I need understand difference between piste:type=backcountry vs piste:type:type=nordic
My guts are telling me that piste:type=backcountry will be track for wider xc skies … kind of trail somewhere between skitour and nordic …
But OSM wiki says nothing about piste:type=backcountry
backcountry refers to a piste grooming level. So I presume off-piste downhill routes may be mapped as piste:type=downhill piste:grooming=backcountry, unsigned=yes.
I would not be very happy with this as this could be quite misleading and fail to distinguish between ungroomed marked trails & true off-piste routes which will have very different associated risks (unsecured avalanche dangers, no patrols, far from regular routes etc). I dont think we have fully mastered mapping backcountry downhill routes (see my comments from quite some time ago).
Route that I was thinking to map this way is rather not downhill … It is rather flat or rolling terrain… it is used by both skialp tourers and nordic (backcountry) runners … it is ungroomed.
So maybe piste:type=nordic piste:grooming=backcountry is more appropriate I guess?
Yes, piste:type=nordic + piste:grooming=backcountry is what I understand as the right combination here.
Check this page for the common grooming and type combinations for each practice : https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:piste:grooming