RfC: Have pathless hiking routes (no trail_visibility) be some manner of related nodes instead of paths

[erutan]

@rhhs

About safety and crossing passes, there’s Key:rtsa_scale - OpenStreetMap Wiki

I didn’t know that existed, and presumably most people outside of Russia won’t either. A lot of rating systems include some aspect of risk and exposure, though those can be masked by a more difficult mode of travel (unexposed simple climbing, and exposed walking can get the same rating). An unknown GPS route from the internet doesn’t necessarily mean something is safe, just that it’s been done.

@Hungerburg

The ones, the Alpine Club marks with respective sign on their guideposts certainly are different. I am fine with them mapped as paths. Not so though with the routes from the guidebooks, comparable to the Swiss High Alpine Routes (where the Mountain Hiking Routes, that are covered by its SAC Mountain Hiking scale are the approach routes.)

There’s a number of US guidebooks that detail XC routes (including an entire book for one route) where the original author would be horrified to see them as a path.

@Hungerburg

I agree, a perfect example why a path with trail_visibility=no can still be mapped a path, without breaking the verifiability credo. Mind you, these cables are no suitable to plug carabiners, just something to hold on. Sometimes they are more a nuisance, if having to step over them to not fall, when they lie on the ground. But some people cannot get enough of them.

According to a certain interpretation of it (original intent and my and others understanding of it), but not with it is commonly being used according to some data analysis, and what it might be changed into.

@Hungerburg

@erutan

I would say if there’s markers every few meters that would fall into a path…

One more reason to map an invisible path, where there is no path to be seen OTG, while still being verifiable as used for human traffic.

Yeah, if something is trailblazed:visibility=excellent or good it seems like it’d clearly be a path to me and not a route. Intermediate would also indicate this to me.

Some thoughts on horrible and no here.

@Hungerburg

@rhhs

What we can do, of course, is to add information to the map to show hikers where it’s not safe to go, such as cliffs and screes, as long as they exist on the ground.

Cliffs are fine to see, not all users have excellent DTM; screes get mapped already, they rarely are dangerous, often fun instead, going down.

Yeah trying to mark up levels of risk on off-trail terrain seems like it’d be an infinite task and highly disputed. Rating a route (which assumes good routefinding ability) seems simpler.

@Hungerburg

@osmuser63783

Are such routes verifiable?

I heard, asking locals about a name makes it verifiable, cant this apply to routes

This would fall under a “common name” which is a criteria that I’ll use for terrain features or passes.

@Hungerburg

Routes can contain paths, that is what we have now. Lots of routes get by with that. Routes can also only mentions waypoints where no path leads to. The goal is to map those, and not pull paths out of the thin air, to meet the current model. Please continue your research!

Having pathless routes be outside of the scope of OSM also seems like a viable alternative to me (I’ll happily delete some existing ones) - having them show up as paths (which is currently happening) doesn’t.