Trail_visibility explained

Eh, the wiki states that good “sometimes has to be searched for.” Honestly both of the example photos for good look more like intermediate to me (a very faint path through grass, then another which doesn’t exist for 50 meters), but we’ve complained about this before. :stuck_out_tongue:

I think based on the current key that the path shown there would fall into excellent visibility.

Tagging it as T2 doesn’t seem appropriate, as someone doesn’t need balance & good footwear to step on leaves, but SAC is full of weird little requirements. T2 is required to be steep, T3 is required to have exposure. Neither of these requirements are reflected in either sample photo on the OSM wiki. The T3 photo also does a poor job of showing “Use of hands for balance potentially needed” as the only time you’d really use your hands on that terrain would be if you fell as the majority of the obstacles are below thigh high.

PS - If we take into account how visible the path would be in bad weather (which multiple countries trail classifications do, along with the first example here https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:trailblazed#Examples) it’d be less clearcut but the vast difference slope would likely keep it easily followable. The following probably has little chance of being adopted as it doesn’t map well to the existing system, but it feels like it makes more sense in terms of how the average person thinks of path visibility and ensures that excellent is actually excellent not just good. RFC: hiking_visibility key 🍿 paired with hiking_technique and hiking_exposure/fall_risk this rounds out the hiking path trinity

PPS - @Hungerburg I seem to recall somewhere you asking for examples of T2 and T3 terrain outside of mountains, but can’t find where it is. One easy example would be coastal areas, which often have boulders. I’ve posted lots of photos from the southwest which contain T2-T5 terrain despite not being mountainous (the sandstone ridges are only a few hundred meters high, but tend to be steep). I have relatives that live on the east coast - there’s an informal trail up the side of a hill that has a small rock face that is T4 (the hill is ~330m high, the slope starts steepening after 265m and a lake nearby is at 170m).