Rumney Traffic Map

Eli Buzzell wrote: It is a little difficult to not be an individual when you are the only one working on something, and the raw data is totally subjective anyway. It should be noted that Rumney attracts a lot of hard sport crushers, so it may not be that invalid.

not sure I worded my comment well, but I was trying to say I prefer the way you reported, allowing people to do what the numbers what they like

Jon Frisby wrote: not sure I worded my comment well, but I was trying to say I prefer the way you reported, allowing people to do what the numbers what they like

That totally flew by me, but I appreciated the opportunity to defend my reasoning - no matter how poorly I did.

Cool, I'll see you at Yellowknife! I'll be the only one there!

Ira O'Meara wrote:Cool, I'll see you at Yellowknife! I'll be the only one there!

Closed for Cliff Pigeons currently, til August 1st.

...or not

I don't think lower Yellow Knife is closed, only the Summit cliff, the Asylum and the Monolith. There is a little bit of confusion because the sign lists the route 'Northwest Passage' (at the Summit Cliff) as closed. The area recently dubbed 'The Northwest Passage' ( the gully to the left of the Prudential Crag) is open.

I assumed Yellowknife was closed, I was climbing at the Prudential yesterday and there was a sign that basically said everything beyond this point is closed (I made the approach through the Northwest Territories). The sign was at the far end of the Pru, which led me to believe that there was likely another sign like it at the Hinterlands. That said, if yellow knife is open I saw some potential lines up there that I'm going to have to explore.

Yellowknife has never been part of the closure, but the top of the ridge is very near the Summit Cliff. I think it is fine to climb the routes, just be aware and be quiet. Probably better to not belay at the top if you can help it, and definitely don't rap in from the top.

The new trail from the Pru to the Hinterlands stays lower than the old way that brought you up closer to the Asylum. The closing of the Asylum seems to be out of an over abundance of caution to me anyway so crossing hiking the trail should be no problem if you are not screaming and shooting off cannons.

M Sprague wrote:Yellowknife has never been part of the closure, but the top of the ridge is very near the Summit Cliff. I think it is fine to climb the routes, just be aware and be quiet. Probably better to not belay at the top if you can help it, and definitely don't rap in from the top. The new trail from the Pru to the Hinterlands stays lower than the old way that brought you up closer to the Asylum. The closing of the Asylum seems to be out of an over abundance of caution to me anyway so crossing hiking the trail should be no problem if you are not screaming and shooting off cannons.

You know how I like to scream and shoot off cannons after I send though...

Thanks Mark!

Well, we have been trying to take out those annoying windmills across the valley. Why couldn't they have been a little more high tech and used these wind turbines without blades

M Sprague wrote:Well, we have been trying to take out those annoying windmills across the valley. Why couldn't they have been a little more high tech and used these wind turbines without blades

I live here and they don't bother me. I like watching them from my porch, it reminds me that there is good in the world and that efforts towards sustainable energy are happening. Efforts to change the Groton wind farm would be better placed in preventing the Northern Pass, but that's where I'll call an end to that conversation.

This thread is about my map after all....

Thread drift - much like the unnerving low frequency background noise from the turbines. The visuals and the intent, like the map, OK ;))

I know how to get around that insidious low-frequency hum from the turbines....climb at one of Eli's areas with high perceived crowding so that the barking dogs, shouting climbers, chatting belayers, and groups of children drown it out! :)

M Bageant wrote:I know how to get around that insidious low-frequency hum from the turbines....climb at one of Eli's areas with high perceived crowding so that the barking dogs, shouting climbers, chatting belayers, and groups of children drown it out! :)

Now that's how you use the map!

M Sprague wrote:Thread drift - much like the unnerving low frequency background noise from the turbines. The visuals and the intent, like the map, OK ;))

Am I going insane? I have never heard any noise from those things. In fact, I've been very close to huge fields of them before and they are totally silent. I like the way they look too.

Eli Buzzell wrote: it reminds me that there is good in the world and that efforts towards sustainable energy are happening.

YES!

Also, Eli, this map is dope. I want to do this with other major climbing areas now.

caesar.salad wrote: Am I going insane?

Not sure about that, just not very observant; but no, they are not silent at all unless there is no wind. They sound like a rhythmic version of the low roar of jet in the distance or strange storm in medium to high wind. Hundred foot plus blades are whipping through the air. Just a little google will give you lots of information. Unfortunately, current industrial wind turbines are not nearly as benign as we would wish for a number of reasons. There is still lots of work to go to come up with a good energy source. I am actually coming around to the idea of nuclear (in the form of thorium reactors, not the horrible ways we do it now) Let's take it to a new thread in the community forum if people want to discuss it more without hijacking Eli's thread.

Eli Buzzell wrote:Last night I wrote a long post explaining everything, hit submit - and mountainproject timed out. Here it goes again, I'll definitely hit copy before I hit submit this time around. I guess I'll start by explaining how the map was made. Methodology: In early March I installed the ArcGIS Collector App on my phone, and began the process of making this map. I started by identifying criteria that make different crags have high or low traffic (which turns out to be a very subjective thing). The criteria I identified were: Rock Quality, Number of Routes, Past Popularity, and Hike time. I then determined that the best way to rank crags would be to create a point system for each category, and average the total points each crag scored in each category. Each category was ranked 1-5, 5 being the highest score and 1 being the lowest, we'll get into specifics in a minute. Rock Quality: Totally subjective, but pretty easy to see that places like Waimea would score a 5 (pretty much perfect rock) and places like Left of the Venus Wall would score a 1 (Pretty much the shittiest rock/lichen and moss covered/chossy/sharp as hell/things that make it not enjoyable). It is a subjective measure; a great example of this is Below the New Wave - I think that the rock quality there is not superb, but not bad at all. I gave it a 4. (I'll explain why I chose Below the New Wave later) Past Popularity: Again, relatively subjective but with a pretty decent consensus. Past popularity is scored with a 5 being the most popular, and 1 being the crags that no humans climb at. The Parking Lot Wall and The Meadows are big standouts here, they're always packed (they both scored 5s). Conversely the Infinity Wall probably has only seen me as a visitor this year, so it scored a 1. To continue with Below the New Wave, it scored a 4 in this category, because I do very often see climbers there, but it is by no means a destination crag. Hike Time: Everyone knows that sport climbers hate hiking. If you argue with me I'll present you with the Prudential. It is THE destination crag in the West Crags, but you almost never see people there. For Hike Time it scored a 1 because it takes quite a long time to get to whether you go through the Black Jacks or the Hinterlands. The opposite crags are things like The Meadows, Parking Lot Wall, or 5.8 Crag (Which take no time or effort to get to). Here I gave Below the New Wave a 4 again because it does require a small amount of effort, but isn't bad at all. Number of Routes: Here is by far the most confusing category but also the most objective, because of the way I split it up. I did this by trying to find natural breaks in the data, which led to the following breakdown(from memory I can't find my actual note about this one): 1 = 1 -7 Routes 2 = 8 - 14 Routes 3 = 15 - 20 Routes 4 = 21 - 28 Routes 5 = 29 - 54 Routes As you can see from the break down, this is what adds a some of confusion to the map - Below the New Wave only has 6 routes, so even though it scored a 4 in all the other categories the 1 in this category takes down the average significantly, putting it on par with some definitely less popular crags. Because of this I would say that my map may be better at estimating the number of parties per crag as opposed to the number of likely available routes. I went out and geo-tagged all 42 Crags with the Collector App over the span of a couple months, and then spent a couple sessions with the data making the map. Things that I left off the map entirely are crags like The Monolith, Hail Vader, and Hohe Hinterland (theres a few more I think that would be silly to put on - see Utopia Ledges). I did wind up going out to The Buffalo Pit, Gem Hunter, and a couple other totally ridiculous ones (I found a lot of relatively untouched rock/boulders in the process). Obviously this is imperfect, but I think it is really interesting and I'd love to do it for other crags, perhaps to get involved in planning erosion control and trail building. Areas where I'm probably very wrong: Crags like Monsters from the Id are incredibly popular, but only for the 1% of us that crush 5.13 (not me). Because of things like this, my past popularity numbers are likely inflated in places (see monster getting a 3 in past.pop) and deflated in other places (see the Northwest Passage getting a 1). As with anything that is subjective it has the power to become incredibly inaccurate, especially if the project is left to the hands of one person (in this case myself). As far as actual traffic; I never did a head count, I've just been climbing at Rumney for years and basically went off of those observations. Notes about the map: - The symbols are sized porportionally to the number of routes per crag (1-54) in an attempt to make the symbol about the size of the actual crag when it is overlaid on the imagery basemap. That was the only reason I did it that way (that and I wanted the bigger crags to stand out). - The numbers on the symbols are a reference only to the Crag Key, so that you can tell what you're looking at. I made the map because I don't like climbing in crowded areas very often, and I wanted to have a good time. It was a lot of work, but I learned a lot in the process, did a cool project that I care about, and hopefully shared some valuable information with the community. The data is a mess, but I still have all of it and am willing to share.

I've read through this three times, and it still makes no sense to me. It sounds like you're using your subjective sense of "choss versus solid", "it's a long hike", and "I think I remember it being crowded" to determine what color to make a crag.

So this explains why there are no surprises in your map - there's no actual data there, it's just perceptions.

It is pretty though, I'll give you that!

Cheers!

GO

GabeO wrote: I've read through this three times, and it still makes no sense to me. It sounds like you're using your subjective sense of "choss versus solid", "it's a long hike", and "I think I remember it being crowded" to determine what color to make a crag. So this explains why there are no surprises in your map - there's no actual data there, it's just perceptions. It is pretty though, I'll give you that! Cheers! GO

Dearest Gabe,

Please send me a purely objective measure the star rating system on mountainproject, as well as a way to extrapolate the number of ticks per route out to the climbers that do not use mountainproject, and also a way to measure different climbers's hiking times on average for the whole community. Then please stand at every crag at Rumney to take a headcount to make sure it's accurate, and send me that information too.
Actually you should use your superior GIS skills to analyze the data that you have created, and make an even prettier map. Oh, and you have to do this with no outside help, and no data other than your own.

I did the best I could with the information I had, but I'm sure your map will be much better than mine and I look forward to seeing it. Hopefully you can finish and post it up before it starts snowing again so that people get a chance to utilize it.

Also please get everyone's perspective on the YDS in-line so that a Gunks 5.6 and a Rumney 5.6 feel the same.

Cheers!

ELI

Eli, Gabe has a point. I was thinking much the same. From a methodology perspective, why not simply draw up a map with your subjective experience of crowdedness color coded with circle size representing the number of routes. The result is the same accuracy and usefulness without all the effort trying to come up with a pseudo analytical justification; a map looking pretty much the same as you have. After all, it is a guide for a subjective experience.

To do this entirely objectively would require thousands of man hours and would most likely not be significantly different from the present result. While Eli's study would most likely not stand up to the scientific scrutiny required by the famed journals, "Nature" or "Science", his method is valid (evidenced by the fact that the data generally agree with what we all see at Rumney; in fact, that is actually the most important point SUPPORTING his method). Whether it is reliable is harder to determine given that the study has not been repeated.