Article: AT Elevation Gain and Loss, by Section

[rafe]

Good stuff here. Interesting. Georgia is (was?) harder than I thought...

[Colter]

One good lesson is that the AT is a lot steeper than most people think.

Thanks for taking the time to research all that out and post it here.

[Pedaling Fool]

Mapman, that's a lot of work! One thing that I hate about the maps are the contour lines, they just seem to represent too few feet making it difficult to use them in the field. The best example of this are the maps for NH. Those are crazy contour lines, they're so compressed, rendering them unreadable. I purchased a map from one of the huts, it's contour lines are 100 ft, much better.

[map man]

John Gault, I know what you mean about the contour lines. When I first saw that the scale of the CT/MA maps was 1:37,500 I thought that at least for those two states I might not need to check the USGS topo maps out of the library, but no! The contour lines were so close together it hurt my head. The base map (which was the USGS topos) had contour intervals of just 10 feet and, of course, they had reduced the size of the maps just over 1.5 times from the USGS originals. Those New Hampshire maps you mentioned also use the USGS 7.5 minute maps as their base, but they are even more compressed!

When it came to looking at the USGS maps I was always much happier looking at the ones with 20 foot, or even better, 40 foot intervals. And luckily these two scales represented most of the AT. But when I hit the few places where the interval was 10 feet or 3 meters (parts of PA, NY, CT and MA come to mind), the lines got so squished together on severe slopes that it was a real eye strain to figure out how many lines had been crossed.

[Sudoku]

Map Man... thank you. Thank you thank you thank you! I was *sort of* toying with the idea of doing something like this to see how much elevation gain I did on each day of my hike... but I never got around to dedicating myself. And I wouldn't have done it nearly so well as you have here! This is professional stuff. You should be very impressed - I am. Like people are saying... I'm surprised at Georgia! Maybe I just expected to be tired then so it wasn't a surprise when I was .
Thanks again for sharing!

[doodles]

An unbelievable amount of work. Very cool. Real interesting the way you broke every section apart.

Thanks for the research.

[sweatoid]

What a fantastic analysis! Detailed AT work like yours is rare. I like your low-tech approach combined with your knowledge of the AT related to thru/section hiking.

I've been studying 'Mileage - Climb Data Summaries' by James R. Wolf from the Hiking the Appalachian Trail, 1975 (Rodale Press). Wolf used Gross Feet Climbed between points. His data collection efforts included thru-hiking the AT in 1971. The AT was 2007.5 back then. I'm going to create updated summaries to compare the AT from then to now. Unfortunately, I won't be able to thru-hike this year to check my numbers. But one day : )

[LIhikers]

This is good stuff, thanks for all the work!
But I don't understand how the change can be different when going northbound and southbound between the same two points over the same route.
Can anyone explain this to me?

[Groucho]

This is good stuff, thanks for all the work!
But I don't understand how the change can be different when going northbound and southbound between the same two points over the same route.
Can anyone explain this to me?

Unless the starting and ending elevations are the same they would have to be different.

[LIhikers]

But wouldn't the amount of change still be the same?
Let's say shelter A is 100 feet above sea level and shelter B is 200 feet above sea level that's a change of 100 feet no matter which way you go. One direction it is a gain of 100 feet and the other direction is a loss of 100 feet, but still a change of 100 feet either way.
But then again I'm the one who doesn't seem to understand, so maybe not.

[map man]

LIhikers, let's use your example of 100 feet of elevation change, and let's say it's a steady gain of that 100 feet over a mile's distance for a NOBO hiker, with no changes in the angle you are climbing. A NOBO hiker would experience 100 feet/mile of elevation gain, while a SOBO hiker would experience 0 feet of gain per mile. Or to put it another way, if the table says there is 246 feet of elevation GAIN per mile for a NOBO, there is also 246 feet of elevation LOSS per mile for a SOBO in that same stretch.

[LIhikers]

It's still got me confused. I think I'll let it go and come back to it in a month or so. Maybe my thinking will be different enough then for me to understand.

[Groucho]

It's still got me confused. I think I'll let it go and come back to it in a month or so. Maybe my thinking will be different enough then for me to understand.

Maybe a more complex example would help: Imagine a five mile section of trail starting at gap A, climbing to peak 1, descending to gap B and finishing on peak 2. We go north on this trail and return going south. The elevation change from gap A to peak1 is 1000', steadily climbing. We then descend to gap B which involves a 1000' elevation change. Finally, we climb (500' elevation change) to peak 2. Our climb, elevation gain, for the trip is 1500'. Division by the five miles gives us 300' of climb per mile. (note that there is 1000' of descent for the five miles which is 200' feet per mile)

If we were to take the return trip from peak 2 (this would be north to south) we would descend 500' to gap B, climb 1000' to peak 1 and finally descend 1000' to gap A. The climb is 1000', 200' per mile for the five miles. The descent is 1500' or 300' per mile. The average is (200 + 300)/2=250.



Perhaps the headings on the columns of data may be confusing. Look at Table 1 -- Elevation Gain and Loss by Section. If it were Climb and Descent by section, would that help? The Headings SOBO and NOBO might be replaced by Climb/mi. SOBO and Climb/mi. NOBO respectively. Note that the climb/mi. sobo=descent/mi. nobo

In the first Spring er - Neels Gap, Springer is at a higher elevation than Neels Gap. The principles involved in the example above are expandable to any number of peaks from point A to point B.


map man-sorry if i stepped on your toes but the question was asked of anyone, and i have typed too long to delete. if i have stated anything wrong, feel free to correct me.

[JonathanLegare]

Do you have this in a data file, perhaps Excel or OpenOffice, or alternatively a tab-delimited text file? If so, could you post it as an attachment? This is excellent data, and I would like to use it for some hiking projections.

[cutman11]

Just reviewed this. Great stuff as always. Mapman puts Obsessive compulsive guys like me to shame. Amazing!!... It does lend some credence to the thought that those first few days in GA seemed tougher, but not just because we didnt have our trail legs yet. It really was more difficult than what came later.

[map man]

Sorry, JonathanLegare, I don't have this information on a spreadsheet or any other kind of electronic format (other than the posting here at WhiteBlaze). It's written out by hand on many, many sheets of paper.

And cutman11, I've found that one of the best ways of dealing with my own OCD is to channel that obsessiveness into constructive endeavors that at least a few folks other than myself might find useful. That's how I came to research and write the couple (let's say "data intensive") articles that I have for WB.

[Tin Man]

Here you go. I removed most of the descriptive text and preserved the section titles. I did not check for missing or changed data in the reformatting/editing process.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE June 7, 2008 11:44 pm

Anomalies found in the conversion process have been fixed. This was mainly in the detail Table 3. Data in Tables 1 and 2 from previous version were fine.

[rgarling]

With this Excel-ized data, I was able to write a macro to compute the approximate locations of the Everests along the AT. It appears they are located somewhere near the following mile markers (northbound).

102
196
309
413
539
660
776
891
1036
1247
1410
1551
1679
1786
1868
1949
2076

someone should probably check those calculations.

[Kerosene]

I had nothing better to do on a Friday evening (how pitiful is that!):

102 - Just south of Franklin (Rock Gap Shelter) [102 trail miles]
196 - Mt. Collins Shelter in GSMNP [94 miles]
309 - Hogback Ridge Shelter [113 miles]
413 - Hampton, TN [104 miles]
539 - Between Davis Path & Knot Maul Branch Shelters (VA) [126 miles]
660 - Between Laurel Creek & Niday Shelters (VA) [121 miles]
776 - Punchbowl Shelter, of National Geographic Fame (VA) [116 miles]
891 - Bearfence Mountain Hut in SNP [115 miles]
1036 - Devil's Racecourse Shelter (MD) [145 miles]
1247 - Leroy A. Smith Shelter (PA) [211 miles]
1410 - North of RPH Shelter (NY) [163 miles]
1551 - North of Dalton, MA [141 miles]
1679 - Killington, VT [128 miles]
1786 - Eliza Brook Shelter (NH) [107 miles]
1868 - Gorham, NH [82 miles]
1949 - Piazza Rock Lean-to (ME) [79 miles]
2076 - Katahdin [127 miles]

So it looks like I still have to cover that tough tough section from Gorham to Piazza Rock. I'd be fine with the elevation change if you could walk it without tripping over a root every other step. At least it's supposed to be beautiful!

[HikerRanky]

Here is someone else that didn't have much to do tonight either, so I took the previous people's work, and changed it around to reflect the Everest points if you start at Katahdin and go SOBO to Springer.....

Mileage markers:

156
258
337
424
539
673
810
1001
1194
1332
1439
1556
1681
1800
1904
2011
2115