Dear Peter and all others, Peter wrote Thu Sep 15 2022 23:37:04 GMT+0200
Wouldn't scramble=yes with highway=path do the trick? Hurts nobody, and carries the exact information you want.
IMHO as clear as friendly "no" 🙂 In current state, scramble has not an sufficiently clear definition to fulfill "carries the exact information"; more work on the definition when hands are [not] "required" is required.
But do we want to discuss until we have a clear definition? Is it worth the effort? I think we shall reflect that SAC did clearly define T1+2 must not and T4+T5+T6 must contain use of hands – but they left T3 open: "You may need your hands for balance". IMHO, that vague wording with "may" is not a drawback of the definition, but a strength. If we introduced highway=scramble with current definition as "tag for hiking paths, where use of hands is required", to tag correctly as highway=path/scramble, mappers need to decide whether hands are required. But that is highly individual, depending on body shape, fitness, intensity of sense for balance, fear level, how slippery shoes are on the ground in which weather condition. To illustrate how difficult telling apart "hands required or not" is, two edge cases: 1) A hike traverses a steep muddy hillside that is fine when dry but extremely slippery when wet – so the very same person uses hands to balance or not, it only depends on the weather (experienced in geothermal area). What is then the property of the way? In doubt the more difficult one? Or depending on how often that way is dry versus wet? If so, the whole year or only during hiking season? etc. 2) A four year old kid (like mentioned by Marc_marc) will need the hands even for little steps of 20cm, while Ueli Steck is scrambling in terrain many people would consider requiring climbing gear, see e.g. at 2:28 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfpYNr7es0Y So the range of scrambling is extremely wide. Where in that range shall a mapper start? Maybe we could re-use from Peter's question _"a grown-up, non-challenged, average hiker without climbing skills and without special gear other then a cane, hiking shoes and gloves"_ While that will rule out both extremes I sketched, what is an average hiker? In the alpine club of my home town in Germany, most people in the hiking groups are seniors, so the "average hiker" may be over 65 years. In northern Germany, paths are built very solid, have relatively smooth surface and the highest hills are below 200m. So I guess a lot of them will use hands already for slightly steeper stairs like in Angkor Wat https://i.huffpost.com/gen/1344437/thumbs/o-ANGKOR-WAT-STAIRS-570.jpg?1 But the average hiker from Cusco in Peru will be much younger and will be hiking between 2000m and 5500m altitude in steep terrain on quite uneven paths that have been created with minimal building effort. They IIRC do Huayna Picchu path & staircase completely without scrambling despite it's really really steep and also hundreds of meters high (very left side in https://www.hikr.org/gallery/photo228207.html?post_id=20026) – I do not assume our average 65+ year old hiker from the flat would go there without hands, and be it only because of vertico which usually increases with age. To illustrate how little clear current definition is to me, both by the description and provided photos: I am hiking in SAC T3 or above (so where scrambling may exist) maybe 3-8 days a year since 3 decades, so I know it but I am not at all trained & routined. The photo embedded in the page makes the impression it's SAC3 hiking, the ground of the 5 people on upper part is invisible, the lady at right has steps like in a staircase – so from the picture, I strongly guess I would walk upright, and most routined trail runners would probably even run it. All photos of linked "Snowdon" webpage show people walking upright and create the impression of a pretty usual hiking tour though rocky & ridge terrain, so this example does not at all make clear that people are _required_ to use the hands. The middle photos for "Hirschlucke" shows a fix rope in a nearly vertical wall of at least 20m heigth, that looks like typical easy climbing technique is required and force on holds is obviously needed (so UIAA grade III), but as current definition tells "A scramble ends where climbing starts", the way must be tagged as climbing but not highway=scrambling. scramble=grade has no description and the values do reveal only exactly one grade – so why add a grade at all if it's always the same? 🤔 Conclusion from my point of view: All hiking trails of difficulty SAC T1+2 are clearly not scramble and all T4+5+6 are clearly scramble, so highway=scramble could only add more information to SAC T3 hikes which are not clarified by the existing tagging like smoothness=very_horrible mentioned in my other email and in wiki page. Moreover, I doubt we will come up with a definition that is resulting in mostly consistent tagging path/scramble. Both together limits the potential added value considerably, while nearly all data consumers (renderer, themes, editors, routers) use highway=path so would need to be altered which is a massive effort. IMHO it's not worth it. Peter wrote Thu Sep 15 2022 00:03:48 GMT+0200 > If a sign says a path will make you scamble somewhere Despite hiking in many different regions and terrains and grades, I can't recall I ever saw such a sign besides fun/prank/ironic ones like "student crossing" https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41ePl0GmRtL.__AC_SY300_QL70_ML2_.jpg Do you have some examples of serious ones? Besr regards, Georg _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list Tagging@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
