Consensus on digital maps?

Gordon said:

However -

I did a 10 mile walk many years ago in the Howgills, carrying an ex
RAF altimeter. It was heavy(!) and recorded 2300ft of ascent.

The Tracklogs plot of the same route gave 2365ft of ascent.

Close enough for jazz, I think, bearing in mind the undulations of the
'Owgills, and the fact that I had to keep resetting the altimeter at
the start of each bit of climbing. :-)

As I said, if I route tends to go primarily up and down then the ascent
will tend to be fairly accurate. It's the flat walking, following
contours, especially next to cliffs, that cause the problems.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk
http://www.wildwales.fsnet.co.uk

Andrew Whaley said:

You probably don't want to go much lower than 50m anyway.

It was lower in the original version, then Anquet increased the height.
They told me about editing the file when I complained about it. I've
set mine to 15m which works fine.

By the way, you can see the 50m altitude squares quite clearly in 3D
mode when you drop right down to ground level. Take a close look at
Crib Goch or Bwlch Main on Snowdon to clearly see the limitations of the
height grid.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk
http://www.wildwales.fsnet.co.uk

Paul Saunders <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Gordon said:

However -

I did a 10 mile walk many years ago in the Howgills, carrying an ex
RAF altimeter. It was heavy(!) and recorded 2300ft of ascent.

The Tracklogs plot of the same route gave 2365ft of ascent.

Close enough for jazz, I think, bearing in mind the undulations of the
'Owgills, and the fact that I had to keep resetting the altimeter at
the start of each bit of climbing. :-)

As I said, if I route tends to go primarily up and down then the ascent
will tend to be fairly accurate. It's the flat walking, following
contours, especially next to cliffs, that cause the problems.

In which case of course, the total ascent is really
irrelevant/unnecessary.
--
Gordon

Gordon said:

Quoted message said:

As I said, if I route tends to go primarily up and down then the
ascent will tend to be fairly accurate. It's the flat walking,
following contours, especially next to cliffs, that cause the
problems.

In which case of course, the total ascent is really
irrelevant/unnecessary.

Perhaps, but many walks are a mixture of both so it's annoying when the
flat ridges and river walking boost the overall ascent, making you think
you've climbed much higher than you really did. IIRC I used to
calculate the ascent of the "southern" Beacons horseshoe as around 600m,
whereas Anquet gives around 750m. Quite misleading IMO.

Where I'd really like to know my ascent is on my Gower coast walks,
which often undulate a great deal. Although the elevation rarely
exceeds 60m, the total ascent can add up to quite a lot, but what
exactly? It's really difficult to figure that out by studying the
contour lines on the map, even if you do have a GPS track overlaid onto
a 25k map scan (with 5m contour intervals!). With Anquet the results
are hopeless.

I tried overlaying a GPS track of a recent walk and found that my track
dropped from the cliff top to sea level and back again at one point. If
I'd really done that I'd be dead now! All due to the low resolution
height grid unfortunately.

Perhaps one day we'll have a high res grid...

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk
http://www.wildwales.fsnet.co.uk