Sick of the sight of sprouts? Fed up with Fancy Hats?
Then this quiz is for you.

To keep it simple, it's a multiple choice question.
How much ascent is there on the route shown: From Cannich to Temple Pier, Loch Ness, and from Inverfarigaig to Ault na Goire, in total?

Answer A, B or C. Merry B&**£y Christmas!










A: Is it really worth counting?

B: 521m by RouteBuddy, but that's probably a bit too much.

C: Over double 'B' - 1058m

Contour counting is best done when drink has not been taken. I'll have a go sometime in mid January.

Surely over-estimating is better than under? Then it's a nice surprise when you're not so knackered at the end of the day.
That first hill out of Cannich goes on, like, for-e-ver. The one up to Ault-na-goire is a bit the same. Nice start and finish to the day...

For the metrically-confused amongst the Challenge Family: 1,058m is quite a bit higher than Scafell Pike.

With my vinegar-soaked-wheezing-paper-bags-for-lungs, I think I might have noticed that much clambering up hill on my walks along this route in the past, weighed down by that small house on my back and a promise of a party with the Sutherlands. And I'm d*mn sure that Lord Elpus would have had more than a quiet word with me in the pub at Drum.

My answer is A because my route doesn't go that way. Having said that when I did go that way last year I'm sure it was higher than the time before I did it.

Ian C.

Why do you want to fry my boxers?

Seriously though, how does contour count and Anquet make it so different, i.e. 450m - 992m. Why have I got a headache?

Fear not, mon capitain. I have devised a route that starts at Dornie and then goes rapidly downhill all the way to Montrose.

Sounds like a plan

Sounds like my kind of route, could it be tweaked to start from SB? Denis is asking for an easy route.


Oh, and there's nowt wrong with a decent Brussels Sprout.

OK, seriously, the answer is both B & C (and maybe A as well)!

The ascent for this particular stravaig depends entirely on the keenness of the eye and, for the digital choice, the number and accuracy of waypoints plotted. Digital mapping can give wildly inaccurate results on roads & major tracks.

Any road on the map is merely a graphic, scaling at maybe 30 m wide on a 1:50,000, and, crucially, its level surface is not reflected in the digital map's height data. This is why, on Memory Map, the occupants of the cottage near Braemar at NO127909 are apparently faced with the problem of the opposite side of the road being 16 metres (52 ft) higher than it is outside their house (must be a problem backing the car out of the garage!).

Zoom in and pick any land rover track contouring around a hill, between contours. Using a paper map, we will say that the ascent here is effectively zero, and so it is. But check the height on the left and right hand sides of the track, and you will find that it often apparently slopes by as much as 3m or 4m.

In the end, experience and a little common sense will iron out these wrinkles. If you look at the results from your computer and think "that can't be right" well, maybe it isn't.

Do I get a prize?

Plotting a route in Anquet I use the 1:25k map with a waypoint on every twist and turn I see. I think this is quite accurate. Walking on pathless hillsides however can turn out to be much different from a featureless map hillside, in real life you tend to choose the way of least resistance.
My gps route contains less waypoints of course.

The mathematician and physicist may well agree that a few answers are simultaneously possible, Sir.

However, the hard-bitten hiker, wearing four day old smelly clothes, with aches & pains in places hitherto unknown, knows that there is only one possible answer, namely that up which he drags his sorry carcase.

I might politely suggest that the correct answer is "None of the Above". All that wicked ascent is indelibly etched in the fevered mind of the Challenger, and as Ian has pointed out, the figure gets larger with each passing year.

But, the answer is certainly NOT 1058m: No. That answer is completely mad, and only exists in the mind of a sadist.

The prize will be rolled over to the next question, or, perhaps shared with Phil and Ian for making an honest stab at it.

And speaking seriously again, thanks for raising this subject Alan. I'm probably the pedantic vetter whom you refer to on another thread though I've now accepted that attempts to rescue Challengers from the digital measurement addiction are quite forlorn. In recent years I only tend to comment when the ascent calculation reaches absurd levels of inaccuracy.
Phil is spot on with his analysis of the drawbacks of digital height measurement. It can be especially pronounced when the route leads through convoluted ground, where even contour counting is tricky. I'd also add that sloppy use of the tool on a ridgeline will lead to some glaring errors; you only need to be off by a couple of millimetres with your waypoints and the errors will accumulate extremely fast. Magnification helps but personally, I feel that you can't better the good old contour count. Okay, I'm a dinosaur, but I rather like to know with some certainty what demands I'm facing on any one day.

Colin

Mr Crawford, Sir!

Certainly not you, Sir! On the other thread I was having a playful dig at Mr Grumpy's lack of bothy knowledge (most likely a slip of the mind) and on another Vetter's recent comments on a friend's route sheet, which were backed up by Ali & Sue, no less...

I agree with you totally, Colin. The inaccurate use of mapping software leads to utterly bizarre results that are patently idiotic - which was the point I thought I had made, in a light-hearted fashion so as to diffuse what would otherwise be a very unhappy situation.

The Vetter in Question will know who he is as I have used his figure (1,058m from Cannich to Allt-na-Goire via the route shown) and I would suggest that he rethinks his response. Had he written that to an intelligent first timer rather than an extremely intelligent old-hand, I wonder at the possible outcome.

I always contour count, and then check, by extremely careful plotting on RouteBuddy using satellite views for the actual position of mountain tracks, which can vary considerably from the diagrammatic plotting by O.S..

All the very best with your vetting, Colin. Phil and I finally agreed on a route yesterday evening. There is another Corbett fest on its way!

Cheers

Alan