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

[erutan]

Sorry was away for a while! Holiday + work stuff and a bit of travel.

@ezekielf

My understanding of the distinction between value 4 and 5 is that 4 is fundamentally still walking (but with some use of hands for assistance) while 5 is no longer walking but scrambling or simple climbing.

Yup!

@ezekielf

In value 5 the use of hands is fundamental to the movement technique, while in 4 hands are just for an extra bit of assistance. This assistance may be for balance, but also for a bracing oneself or a small push/pull to help with a big step over an obstacle. So I’d avoid including “balance” in the tag value for 4, and instead specify that it is “walking with some help from your hands” as opposed to value 5 which is not called “walking”.

That’s a good way of thinking of it. I was trying to draw off my experience of how YDS 2 is described, but yeah even on classic YDS 2 terrain that isn’t a full on mantle I’ll have a little force on my hands at times.

@ezekielf

I’m more wondering about a path that is ~40% value 5 sections and ~60% a lower value. Essentially it alternates between between scrambling/simple climbing and walking a number of times. It could be broken up with each short section tagged separately. But if it is not, would the whole thing still be value 5 (since value 5 movement is required for much of it), or would it be lower (since the majority is walking)?

@ezekielf

What value to use if a route is not micro-mapped by section? Round up I suppose?

This gets into a larger meta issue. From a practical standpoint I think just marking the entire way as the higher rating makes sense, or at least once it first hits that rating if it’s at the lower one for a significant amount of time.

If a path is 60% YDS 3 and 40% YDS 2 it’d just be called YDS 3. If you can get, say a mile in on Class 2 and then it switches over to alternating between the two I’d have it at surefooted + hands up until that point and then just keep it at a scramble. Someone on the working group mentioned that’s how they deal with alternating difficulty from a user centric perspective and that makes sense to me.

UPDATE: If a BMC 0.5 is value 4 until a crux at the end I’d separate those. If it’s value 4 for a while then switches every few minutes for hours I’d just mark that one shift up a grade and keep it at 5. I suppose if it’s value 4 and there’s two or three sustained sections of scrambling it’d worth breaking those out and making them distinct. At the point where someone is doing a scramble it’s nice to know it alternates between 4 and 5 all the time, but they can probably already see that, are comfortable on 5 anyways, or have done research outside of OSM.

In Yoho there was a path that was casual walking up until a waterfall, then a bit past it went more into attentive. I don’t think it’s worth mapping every flip and flop from casual to attentive, but having that first section to the waterfall as casual and then just saying it’s attentive past that seems worth noting.