RFC: hiking_technique key (or a better name!) to describe movement on paths by hikers

[erutan]

@Hungerburg

I was told so often, that scrambling is so hard to decide. Better stay away from this can of worms. Instead sprinkle some obstacles.

No, that’s not what I was saying.

There are times when I think an obstacle node is more appropriate (a mantle, stream crossing, etc) but that doesn’t there is T3+ terrain that should be a way because it lasts for a long enough time that it’s not a node.

@Hungerburg

Agreed, nodes for obstacles such as the 1½m high step (you call it mantle) in the last picture above make much more sense. Perhaps another topic on which obstacles consumers are urged to consider?

Time to draft a proposal?

I started a thread here, which is getting detailed over the details of stepping stones in streams.

General discussion: when to use ways vs nodes for difficulty changes of difficulty or hazards on a trail + should we expand hazards (and/or create an obstacle=*) for hiking/walking/multi-use paths?

This is something that has come up obliquely in conversation a few times. Up in the mountains, or in the sandstone canyons of the Southwestern US it’s fairly common for an obstacle that could be T3 or even T4 (a simple mantle requires use of hands to pull yourself up) along an otherwise T1 or T2 path. In this thread someone mentioned making a 1m section of a path a scramble. It techniquely works, but feels awkward. I put up some related examples of brief obstacles/hazards in a previous commen…

@Hungerburg

so surefooted will be top.

I can understand a healthy debate on whether to include scrambling, but T3 / hands_of_balance still seems clearly in the realm of being on foot.

@ezekielf

I consider scrambling to still be travelling “on foot” (vs on a bicycle, or on a horse), despite also using hands. Including scrambling at the top end makes sense to me.

I was also thinking this - you’re still on foot but using your hands as well. I do think that say the very top of scrambling gets into the territory of the very simple climbing=* (T6, YDS 4, BMC 3) but the lower end more clearly “on foot” and I think the upper end is still pretty simple to toss into “on foot with use of handholds”.

@osmuser63783

What would those be? You can clearly document that unverified_walking is either casual_walking or attentive_walking but never surefooted_walking.

We can do that, and I’m not strongly opposed to it, I just think there’s simplicity in having the *-walking all in the same set. One issue with SAC is that the value names themselves are pretty meaningless and not everyone reads the wiki.

@Hungerburg

I do not understand the high value given to footwear - this depends too much on the abilities of the person rather than the properties of the path.

You’re not going to be doing T4 in high heels. I think people are too aggressive on footwear recommendations (anything above T1 needs high laced boots) but it’s probably worth bringing up a range of options to help casual people prepare or picture terrain.

@Hungerburg

I am still curious about use of hands in the picture I linked two posts above. From a mountaineers/climbers perspective, that might indeed not be the case: Picture showing surefooted walking, no more no less.

The person is literally using their hands for balance in that photo, so I doubt it would be downgraded that much. It’s hard to tell from a single photo what it would be - it could be hands_for_balance along with an exposure hazard, or if the majority of people actually need handholds to progress (vs feeling more secure due to being nervous) then use_of_handholds.

@ezekielf

It would sidestep discussion of whether scrambling can be called casual or how necessary the use of hands really is.

It would, but I feel like things are consolidating quite nicely.

@ezekielf

Each description is fairly concise, but still complex enough that condensing it down to just several words in order to fit in a key value is nearly impossible.

The question of surefooted_walking vs surefooted_hiking is more of a meta debate about consistency vs ease of porting. The only reason I changed it from walking to hiking was to make unverified_walking clearer, but I agree that having hiking on there isn’t necessary.

@Hungerburg

Still, casual_scrambling in my mind describes that Ridge perfectly fine and looks to me the most likely candidate for W4.

W5 should then be something like “too far beyond walking”, just to tell that fact, not giving any specifics, leaving that for other scales.

So what other scale?

• Do we have a single scramble=yes or something that then goes into local ratings (that’d be my preference) scramble:yds_scale=4 scramble:yds_scale=5`
• Do we just have some made up OSM scale, or just rename T5 and T6?

I personally just prefer keeping it with a simple “you are on foot, but you have to use handholds” then you can have foot_scale:yds_scale=4 and foot_scale:yds_scale=5.