West Highland Way ascents

[kenny lochaber]

Planning West Highland way with Daughter in May- she wanted to know the ascents each day.
There is a lot of disparity in the 3 web sites I looked at -
The official WHW web site calls it a total ascent of 4735m- The Long Distance walkers association site calls it 3946m and walk Highlands (I would guess the most accurate) calls it at 3154 m- was wondering if anyone can confirm this final figure is the most accurate- as there is quite a difference - over 30% difference- Many thanks

[Sgurr]

Planning West Highland way with Daughter in May- she wanted to know the ascents each day.
There is a lot of disparity in the 3 web sites I looked at -
The official WHW web site calls it a total ascent of 4735m- The Long Distance walkers association site calls it 3946m and walk Highlands (I would guess the most accurate) calls it at 3154 m- was wondering if anyone can confirm this final figure is the most accurate- as there is quite a difference - over 30% difference- Many thanks

You could always click on Plan GPS at the top right of this page and take the cursor for a walk along the WHW route. I have just done it, but must obviously have thrown in a hill or two accidentally, as it came to over 5000m. Quite honestly, the "extra" height will probably not make as much difference as the wind direction, and and the weather, and nobody can tell you that in advance.

How old is daughter? I went on a long trip with mine at 14 and 41, and quite honestly, she was more interested in where the next slice of chocolate cake was coming from to refuel her than how much we had ascended and descended.

[Giant Stoneater]

I mapped the route out roughly on Anquet maps and it came out at 4200m of ascent.

[jmarkb]

Mapping software can significantly exaggerate the ascent and descent of a traced route, especially when traversing steep slopes. Here's an extreme example: I tried to trace the 600m contour around Schiehallion reasonably accurately using the WH GPS planner at 1:25k scale - it calculates over 600m of ascent and descent when it should be zero! It would be interesting to know if other software is as bad as that.....

Real GPS tracks can also be out by a long way for various reasons.

600m.gpx Open full screen  NB: Walkhighlands is not responsible for the accuracy of gpx files in users posts

[malky_c]

Counting contours is your best bet. As jmarkb points out above, the GPS planner really struggles to understand flatness - probably due to the fact that the line he has drawn cuts corners if looked at on a larger scale, so deviates up and down when it does that.

I have found the GPS planner on here to be good with obvious ups and downs. If I was, for instance, to plot out the Ben Cruachan horseshoe on it reasonably accurately, then it would come back with a sensible ascent. However if I included a long approach along a fairly level glen , then I would expect the planner to exaggerate the ascent for that section. Bit of a pain but there you go.

[Giant Stoneater]

Mapping software can significantly exaggerate the ascent and descent of a traced route, especially when traversing steep slopes. Here's an extreme example: I tried to trace the 600m contour around Schiehallion reasonably accurately using the WH GPS planner at 1:25k scale - it calculates over 600m of ascent and descent when it should be zero! It would be interesting to know if other software is as bad as that.....

Real GPS tracks can also be out by a long way for various reasons.

600m.gpx

I mapped the same route on Anquet and it came out at 300m of ascent which giving the distance around Schiehallion and not being able to exactly map the route is not a bad figure.

[MrsOrr]

I did the WHW over 7 days in 2012. I can remember only two steep sections; the "devil's staircase" out of glencoe and the climb out of Kinlochleven. All other ascents are hardly noticeable as gentle and gradual slopes. Although the total ascents are given I would be interested in descents too, do these even out or do you descend more? Fort William being sea level and Milngavie isn't (no idea of its height from sea level, no doubt someone can tell me)

[jmarkb]

I mapped the same route on Anquet and it came out at 300m of ascent which giving the distance around Schiehallion and not being able to exactly map the route is not a bad figure.

Interesting, thanks. 300m is still a fairly substantial error - and increasing the spatial accuracy of the track can actually make the errors worse, not better!

[jmarkb]

Fort William being sea level and Milngavie isn't (no idea of its height from sea level, no doubt someone can tell me)

Milngavie is about 50m above sea-level, so the difference is negligible!

[Marty_JG]

Mapping software can significantly exaggerate the ascent and descent of a traced route, especially when traversing steep slopes. Here's an extreme example: I tried to trace the 600m contour around Schiehallion reasonably accurately using the WH GPS planner at 1:25k scale - it calculates over 600m of ascent and descent when it should be zero! It would be interesting to know if other software is as bad as that.

To help, I've just tested that exact GPX file on Garmin Basecamp running TalkyToaster maps. Over the 11.6 km it was mainly at 600m altitude, just 30m of ascent and descent (total) over the trip, well with the error of margin on clicking on the map.

I don't know what topographical data OS/WH are using, but TalkyToaster uses the NSAS topography & matches it up pretty well.

[Marty_JG]

I've made several graphs of the WHW using Walk Highlands GPX files plus a few GPX files from people who have walked it.

Using the TalkyToaster topography I graph them at varying between 2600 and 2800 meters of total ascent,

[jmarkb]

That's very interesting : it looks to me like TalkyToaster is applying some filtering method to smooth out noise in the elevation profile, and thus reducing the errors in the ascent/descent figures. Different topography datasets and different methods for interpolating these onto the track may also have some effect.

[prog99]

I get 273m on memory map with Marks track.
Looking really closely it does weave in and out of the 600m contour line.

[Marty_JG]

I wanted to know why you got so very different results to me, so I had a very close look at the contour-draw. In Garmin Basecamp with TalkyToaster you have to fully get to a 10m elevation mark for it to "count", that's the filtering.

For example, an elevation that goes for a few waypoints at 600, 605, 609, 604, 598, 595, 592, 603, 609, 600 etc. would be ten lots of 600 (thus an ascent of zero) rather than trying to count the micro-amounts (30 meters of ascent).

Once you "go up a 10m bracket" it uses that a baseline.

So, 600, 605, 609, 610, 609, 605 would record as 600, 600, 600, 610, 610, 610 (and obviously a total of 10m ascent).

(It's also pretty clear on the graph, it either jumps or drops at 10 meter intervals)

Given GPS units are accurate to about 5 meters (and think how much elevation or drop you can get from 5 meters either side of you) this is probably a reasonable smoothing. I mean, someone trying to draw a flat route around a mountain gets 300 meters of ascent over an 11 km journey - that shows why the WHW figures vary so much.

[fhaggis]

i just dd the WHW last week fr the second time over 5 days and its hilly! Conic hill, devils staircase and the assent from kinlochleven are the main ones, but the rest of it your up and down all day, i loved it but i really forgot how up and down it was!