Proposed features/Hiking

The Feature Page for the approved proposal Hiking can be located at Key:trail_visibility.

The Feature Page for the approved proposal Hiking can be located at Key:sac_scale.

Hiking
Status:	Approved (active)
Proposed by:	Chrischan
Tagging:	sac_scale=various
Applies to:	linear
Definition:	A classification scheme for hiking trails
Rendered as:	<appearance>
Draft start:	2008-03-11
RFC start:	2008-03-11
Vote start:	2008-06-02
Vote end:	2008-07-14

Contents 1 Rationale 2 Applies to 3 Usage, Tags and Values 4 Deprecates 5 Rendering 6 Comments 7 Voting

Rationale

Provide a classification scheme for hiking trails.

• Especially for mountain trails, it is crucial to know wether a trail can be done in sneakers or wether you need ice axe and climbing irons.
• Since Google Maps and the like are pretty unusable for hiking (because they denote only very few trails), this is a region where OSM can be of great value soon and for a long time.
• Many mountaineers already utilize GPSs. It would be great to win as many of them as possible as contributers to OSM.

As far as I know, there is no internationally standardized classification schema. Thus, I propose to incorporate the classification of the Swiss Alpine Club (source in german). Not because I am from Switzerland (I am not), but because in my humble opinion this one is easy to understand and well defined. Scale of difficulty for hiking trails (english, french, italiano, german abstract).

The following table constitutes a 1:1 translation of the SAC scale. Please see the tables further below for the actual tagging proposal.

SAC Scale	Trail	Terrain	Requirements
T1 "Hiking"	Trail well cleared	Area flat or slightly sloped, no fall hazard	None, orientation unproblematic, no map required
T2 "Mountain Hiking"	Trail with continuous line and balanced ascent	Terrain partially steep, fall hazard possible	Hiking shoes recommended Basic sense of direction Some sure footedness
T3 "Demanding Mountain Hiking"	Track mostly visible, exposed sites may be secured with ropes or chains, possible need to use hands for balance	Partly exposed sites with fall hazard, scree, pathless jagged rocks	Well sure-footed Good hiking shoes Medium sense of direction Basic alpine experience
T4 "Alpine Hiking"	Path sometimes invisible, route partly pathless, sometimes need for hand use to get ahead	Terrain quite exposed, precarious grassy acclivities, jagged rocks, facile snow-free glaciers	Familiarity with exposed terrain Solid trekking boots Some ability for terrain assessment and good orientation Alpine experience
T5 "Demanding alpine hiking"	Often pathless, single plainly climbing up to second grade	Exposed, demanding terrain, jagged rocks, few dangerous glacier and névé	Mountaineering boots Reliable assessment of terrain and very good orientation Profound alpine experience Elementary knowledge of handling with ice axe and rope
T6 "Difficult alpine hiking"	Mostly pathless, climbing up to second grade	Often very exposed, precarious jagged rocks, glacier with danger to slip and fall	Excellent orientation Mature alpine experience Familiarity with the handling of technical alpine equipment

Applies to

highway=path

AND

highway=footway

Usage, Tags and Values

Inspired by some comment on the discussion page, I decided to extract all properties that deal with trail visibility and orientation from the SAC scale and put them into a separate tag "trail_visibility". IMHO, both tags are clearly separated and totally independent from each other. There is no reason to mangle these properties together.

Tag	SAC Scale	Trail	Terrain	Requirements
sac_scale="hiking"	T1	Trail well cleared	Area flat or slightly sloped, no fall hazard	None
sac_scale="mountain_hiking"	T2	Trail with continuous line and balanced ascent	Terrain partially steep, fall hazard possible	Hiking shoes recommended Some sure footedness
sac_scale="demanding_mountain_hiking"	T3	exposed sites may be secured with ropes or chains, possible need to use hands for balance	Partly exposed sites with fall hazard, scree, pathless jagged rocks	Well sure-footed Good hiking shoes Basic alpine experience
sac_scale="alpine_hiking"	T4	sometimes need for hand use to get ahead	Terrain quite exposed, precarious grassy acclivities, jagged rocks, facile snow-free glaciers	Familiarity with exposed terrain Solid trekking boots Some ability for terrain assessment Alpine experience
sac_scale="demanding_alpine_hiking"	T5	single plainly climbing up to second grade	Exposed, demanding terrain, jagged rocks, few dangerous glacier and névé	Mountaineering boots Reliable assessment of terrain Profound alpine experience Elementary knowledge of handling with ice axe and rope
sac_scale="difficult_alpine_hiking"	T6	climbing up to second grade	Often very exposed, precarious jagged rocks, glacier with danger to slip and fall	Mature alpine experience Familiarity with the handling of technical alpine equipment

Tag	Trail	Requirements
trail_visibility=excellent	Unambiguous path or markers everywhere	None, orientation unproblematic, no map required
trail_visibility=good	Next marker always visible, but sometimes has to be searched for.	Basic sense of direction, map recommended
trail_visibility=intermediate	Track mostly visible	Good sense of direction, map required
trail_visibility=bad	Path sometimes invisible, route partly pathless	Basic skills in orientation
trail_visibility=horrible	Often pathless	Advanced orientational skills
trail_visibility=no	Mostly pathless	Excellent orientational skills

Deprecates

nothing

Rendering

Generally, I think tag proposals do not necessarily need rendering definitions at all. First, there are many different renderers (Mapnik, Osmarender, Mkgmap) with different abilities in terms of colors and patterns. Second, this decision is independent of the tag schema. Comments on the discussion page agreed that categories above T3 should NOT be mapped similar to normal footways for the safety considerations.

Comments

Moved to discussion page

Voting

If you oppose this proposal, please indicate wether you approve a version with a different key (see discussion page) or a version based on a 1:1 translation of the SAC scale (without separating the trail_visibility).

• I approve this proposal. with the sac_scale key and trail_visiblity as a separate key. --Hawke 22:15, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. I like the fact that the trail visability is a seperate key as this can be applied to other types of trails (such as cycling, ATV/Quad, snowshoe, etc.) --Mungewell 23:32, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal.--Walley 04:03, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal.--Vrabcak 04:54, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. Robx 05:37, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. studerap 07:56, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal.--PhilippeP 09:07, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
• I oppose this proposal. See talk page. Would approve with some changes. -- Gustavf 11:44, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. because we realy need it, but am I the only one to think there are still too much levels ? Sletuffe 14:17, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. Excellent idea. I live in Norway, so it is an appropriate classification scheme for my locality. There are certainly not too many levels - the locals here (like UK fellrunners) happily jog up and down T3 paths in training shoes. --alastairj 23:18, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
• I oppose this proposal. Nothing wrong with the proposal, it's the process that's flawed see http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/bruce89/diary/1835 -- Nic 08:52, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. --Krauti 22:04, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. --Stefku 19:39, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. --Sendelhorst 17:21, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. --Nosolomusic 12:26, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. --MikeCollinson 15:34, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
• I oppose this proposal. I agree with most of the comments by Gustavf. Would approve with some changes (renaming tags, namespace them). Ukuester 07:59, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. --giggls 23:12, 11 July 2008 (UTC)Using this scheme I will finally be able to commit my hiking trails to OSM. I did not do this until now, because I think a plain footway is something which should be walkable even with high-heels!
• I approve this proposal. --SlowRider 21:09, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

The proposal has been Approved with 16:3 votes.