The track gradings question
Original post
Hi everybody,
This has been discussed in the past ( http://tramper.co.nz/?view=topic&id=2080 ). But I want to return to it and start implementing changes. The reason I think it needs to change is that subjective terms like "easy" are not helpful. They are both subjective and misleading -- an "easy" track with flooded rivers may be deadly.
Note that grades are never a complete description of a track, but they are useful in helping users search tracks that might be suitable for them. Grades need to be easy to understand, and not misleading.
Here is my proposal. The existing grade and grade notes to be replaced with four attributes:
* Grade (1-7 scale),
* Fitness indicator (A-D scale)
* Notes (checkboxes to indicate challenges and hazards, e.g. alpine conditions, river crossings, and type-in)
* Winter conditions (type-in)
Grade as follows:
1. Easy access short walk suitable for assisted wheelchair or stroller. Details to be provided in notes. Currently described as "Easy".
2. Short walk on smooth well-maintained track with hazards
well-managed. Suitable for walking shoes. Currently described as "Easy".
3. Easy walking on smooth well-maintained track with hazards
well-managed. Suitable for walking shoes or light weight hiking boots. Generally, Great Walks standard. Currently described as "Easy".
4. Generally easy walking and well marked. Somewhat rough underfoot with roots, mud, slips. Some routes follow rivers.
Hazards include: rivers. Lightweight hiking boots. Typical lowland tramping track. Currently described as "Easy/medium".
5. Unformed and poorly marked lowland track with hand-over-hand scrambling, or a marked but unformed tops track. Navigation skills required on open tops and passes. Suitable for experienced trampers only. Hazards include: tops, rivers. Currently described as "Medium".
6. Unmarked routes along rivers, ridges, and tops. Strong navigation skills, risk identification, and snow skills and equipment required. Scrambling on scree and steep grassy slopes. Hazards include: snow, tops, falls, and rivers. Currently described as "Medium/hard".
7. Exposed, challenging terrain that may require basic mountaineering skills and equipment. Currently described as "Hard".
Comments:
What are people's thoughts on combining both lowland and tops tracks in one grade (5)? Is this reasonable?
The distinction between grades 6 and 7 could be better defined. I don't do much walking at this end of things so I would welcome ideas. Should they be kept separate? How would you define these two grades? Do you have examples?
Fitness indicator as follows:
A: Less than 2 hours walking, gentle climbs.
B: Up to 4 hours per day, gentle climbs.
C: Up to 8 hours per day, ascents of up to 1000m.
D: More than 8 hours per day, or ascents of more than 1000m.
Comments:
What do you think of the balance between time and climb? Is it about right? I could switch it over to distance and climb. Any suggestions for that?
Notes to include checkboxes for: alpine conditions, river crossings, route finding, exposure to falls.
Please let me know your thoughts. Any change in grades will be staged, with a testing period.
43 comments
Howdy everybody,
1) DOC definitions are a good starting point, although they don't provide much granularity at the top end. A lot of items on this site would just be "Routes".
2) Clearly there are actually quite a few tracks that go into alpine environments that are pretty easy and straightforward -- aside from the inherent hazards of an alpine environment. Examples are the Routeburn, Milford, Kepler, Tongariro Crossing, Foggy Peak. So this leads me to think that alpine travel should not ramp the grade up very much.
3) On Newton Creek Hut, I haven't walked it so I've no idea! I'd be interested to hear some examples of what people think are the hardest tramps that are still tramps, and some examples of trips that are one grade back from that in people's opinions. Then we can review how those tracks correspond with descriptors.
4) In regards the visitor's book, that's an excellent idea. I would suggest that both aspects have value though: a more or less objective grade, plus people's rating of how hard it was. Of course every second person who walks the Routeburn might find it "hard" but they're probably less likely to be members so I think it wouldn't hurt to add this, and to graph the results as suggested. I'm pretty sure most of the infrastructure is already in place for this, just switched off. I'll check.
5) In regards fitness and rough terrain, I think it's reasonable to add some comment in about roughness.
6) Ultimately this is all about trying to put an objective measure on something that is fairly subjective. That's hard to do and never going to be 100% perfect. However, I feel that it is good enough to be useful as a guide. Much like grades on climbing routes are a useful guide. I might have particular strengths as a climber that mean one grade 20 is easier than another grade 19. But in general the numbers still help.
Its a noble effort and fraught with as much difficulty as forecasting the weather. I wish you well in this endevour.
As Im getting older I find my 'fear rating' gradually climbing. A couple of years ago I realised that any rating with 'hard' (such as 'medium hard') in it is now too hard for me. Thus I can now only do 'medium' but not 'medium hard'. I expect that, over the next few years, I will be dropping 'medium' too. Mostly my fitness is still OK but it is those tricky exposed manoeuvres which stop me. So even one tricky section can stop me completing a tramp. So, for me, any rating has to revolve around that, not length of time, or elevation gained. Good on you, Matthew, for giving ratings a go.
I have to confess that recently I 'chickened out' on the last, kast, section of getting up Mt Owen, and was mortified to read a friend's comment in the Granity Pass hut book of having had a "nice stroll up Mt Owen"!
I still reckon we're trying to combine too may things into just two scores score. I want to know 5 things:
1) Route-finding difficulty
2) Terrain
3) Vegetation etc
4) Alpine skills
5) Rivers
Of these I can only see sense in combining 2 & 3 (terrain & vegetation) as they basically come down to how fit / tough / obstinate you are.
However, the proposed system combines 1 and 4 (route finding and alpine skills).
1, 4 and 5 are distinct skills and some people will possess one, but not others. And, some tracks will be extremely challenging for route-finding but require absolutely nil alpine skills, and vice-versa. Since I'd rate myself fairly highly in route finding and assessing rivers, but below average on the alpine stuff, combining alpine and route-finding is not helpful. From the above post it sounds as if deepriver has the same concern.
===
To clarify what I mean by each category:
1) Route-finding difficulty
Benched / gravelled track or roadbed
Marked tramping track
Marked route / unmaintained track
Unmarked route along obvious topography, clear landmarks
Unmarked route, confusing topography, little visibility
2) Terrain
Flat
Gentle climbs
Moderate climbs and / or steep loose sidles
Long, steep climbs
3) Vegetation etc
None / Open bush
Tussock / grass / river gravel
Low scrub / river rocks
Tall, walkable scrub-bashing / rocks, occasional gorges or waterfalls in rivers to sidle
Thick impenetrable scrub - crawl or scramble / frequent boulder scrambles or gorges, waterfalls, etc to sidle round
4) Alpine skills
None
Tramp on open tops, exposed to alpine weather
Tramp with some scrambles and exposure to falls
Scramble, frequently on exposed ridges, spurs, faces
Scramble with basic climbing sections, ice axe & crampons as a minimum required
Mountaineering route - technical climbing equipment and skills required
5) Rivers
None / all bridged
Small streams - danger only in extreme weather
Occasional rivers - impassible after heavy rain
Frequent river travel - impassible after heavy rain, long gorge sections and risk of becoming trapped
Major river - Likely to be impassible in all but ideal conditions
In regard @deepriver's concerns, I anticipate that one could conduct a search that was for example medium but with no alpine.
In regard, @madpom's comments...
I could envisage a system whereby you add a track and rate it on 6 criteria using easy little sliders.
The app then calculates an overall combined grade behind the scenes (probably weighted toward whatever the hardest aspect is) and displays that in search results.
In the track details, you can see a break-down of all the grade aspects, as illustrated above.
In the search you could either use the combined grade or pop out an advanced control panel and adjust the other sliders. You could also save these as your permanent preferences to suit your abilities.
As always it's a question of finding a solution that's both easy enough to use and likely to get decent data entered.
@madpom: "'Most people rated this track between 3 and 6. The average rating was 4.8'. or 'Most people rated this track between 3 and 6. The most common rating was 4'."
Yes I like this idea for presentation. Median seems likely to be more relevant than Mean, to me, as any outlier ratings, for something with few ratings to begin with, are less likely to affect it.
Madpoms rating system above is far more sensible, I like it a lot.
Means, mediums, ratings, graphs and all that good stuff are all meaningless if only 2 people bother to enter the data. Have a look through the bulk of tracks "Visitor's Book"s on here and the number of tumbleweeds blowing through often outnumber the number of members who have declared they have walked said tracks.
You may have a point @Yarmoss. I'm forever bumping into people, mainly from overseas, who are tramping where they are 'because they read about it on tramper.co.nz'. But they never seem to register or comment.
If we did go for the option above with multiple, well defined categories, then there would hopefully be less need for people to rate it themselves anyway. By separating the conditions out into well defined separate categories it all becomes much less subjective and there is less scope for disagreement. The disagreement comes mainly from how you weight those individual skills when you work out a single, combined 'difficulty'.
It'd be nice to have both - detailed categories in the track itself and a single 'I found this track ###' in the visitor's book, but I understand Matthew's time is valuable and he does have a life beyond us! And, if we only get one of the two options, you're right, the categories on the tack itself would be my preference.
um, so how would you grade say, rabbit pass to east matuki and what would you do to this grade say for winter conditions (as you would strike about now) and what about other tracks say perhaps, cascade saddle or rees/dart during winter months?
And then, what about after big storms, like we get on the west coast that result in big wind falls. This is going to change track times significantly.
Sorry, but what you guys mentioned regarding sandbagging route grades is a classic issue with any grading system. This results from a huge varied ability amongst punters.
I, personally, think moirs guides etc are well enough coupled with the internet these days. To get up to date route beta, DOC or local groups are best because they know!
Grading tramping tracks/routes is dangerous stuff... I mean that grade you gave for Taranaki, is that by which route? and what time of year?? and which Mitre peak are you on about? the country has three that I know of...
Ok. I'll have a go:
"um, so how would you grade say, rabbit pass to east matuki "
Been a few years, but from memory:
1) Route-finding difficulty
3/5 Marked route / unmaintained track
2) Terrain
3/5 Moderate climbs and / or steep loose sidles
3) Vegetation etc
2/5 Tussock / grass / river gravel
4) Alpine skills
3/6 Tramp with some scrambles and exposure to falls
5) Rivers
3/6 Occasional rivers - impassible after heavy rain
Note: This is assuming you get a boat across the Makarora at the start of the walk.
===
"what you do to this grade say for winter conditions "
Never crossed in winter, so I'd be guessing. Assuming that the pass is likely to be in snow and the south face would probably be ice-covered:
"Snow and ice present on passes in winter. Steep traverses and descents on snow ice, exposed to >100m falls. Only suitable for those with strong alpine skills. Ice axe & crampons essential."
But that's a guess, as I've not been there in winter.
====
"And then, what about after big storms ..."
That's the beauty of an online system - it's editable and adaptive. The first person to encounter changed conditions can update the details of the route for all to see. You can't do that with Moirs guide ...
===
" I mean that grade you gave for Taranaki, is that by which route? "
If someone created a route guide so vague that it is not possible to determine by which route they are ascending Taranaki, or which peak they are climbing, then It'd be a pretty useless route guide. But yes, in that situation, anyone who tried to follow it would a) probably get lost; and b) not know the true difficulty
This thread was closed by matthew .
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| Started by | matthew |
| On | 7 June 2014 |
| Replies | 42 |
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