Ascents given in Trail Centre Guides

Stu T

Where do they get the ascents from. I ride with an Alimeter on (it's my watch I'm a reformed climber) and did Skyline a few weeks ago. The Guide says 200m of ascent wheras my alimeter recorded only 989m. Now allowing for the fact that it sweeps every 5 seconds and changes in air pressure there can be discrepancies but a 1000m? No way.
It also happened on the Derwen at Brechfa which says something like 900m wheras I got around 400m.

My watch is a good piece of kit which has been correct after eight hour days walking in the alps and Scotland and also riding the walna scar road and my legs would seem to back the watch up after a ride so are Trail Centres just bigging themselves up and if so how many riders are they putting off?

bomberesque

assuming you meant they claim 2000m for Skyline then yeah, I'd say they're overstating it. I've not ridden it with a GPS/altimeter or traced the route on OS but I know the difference between a 1000 HM ride and a 2,000 HM one and I don't think there's 2000 HM in that ride (of course it wouldn't be the first time I've been wrong if I were.... :roll: )

perhaps they're counting descents + ascents to publish total vertical distance? that would account for the doubling of the figures against what your gauge is telling you.

Perhaps email them and ask. You're right that a 2,000 HM ride is a daunting task that some people would (reasonably) be put off by

Stu T

Yeah you may be right. When a few of us did Walna Scar at Easter it was running and when we put the route on memory map it was accurate within 10m.

Only thing is it feels better to brag about 2000m of ascent than 989

bomberesque

Dangerous though, if people commit to a real 2,000 HM ride thinking "I did the skyline and that's 2 vertical Km" Cue exhaustion and an air ambulance....

I rode 6 vertical Km one day this summer. All of them DOWN :-D

llamafarmer

I've always assumed the 2000m climbing means that teh total altitude gain on your ascents would be 2000m, ie, you might go up 500, down a bit, up 200, down a bit etc, rather than ever being 2000m higher than your start point.

I don't know how your watch works, so maybe I was just stating what you were already thinking...

Anonymous

llamafarmer wrote:

I've always assumed the 2000m climbing means that teh total altitude gain on your ascents would be 2000m, ie, you might go up 500, down a bit, up 200, down a bit etc, rather than ever being 2000m higher than your start point.

I don't know how your watch works, so maybe I was just stating what you were already thinking...

What he said.

Plus, StuT, fix your typos, man. Your post is incredibly hard to read, for example...

The Guide says 200m of ascent wheras my alimeter recorded only 989m

Took me a while of WTF? before I figured out you were leaving out zeroes.

Stu T

llamafarmer wrote:

I've always assumed the 2000m climbing means that teh total altitude gain on your ascents would be 2000m, ie, you might go up 500, down a bit, up 200, down a bit etc, rather than ever being 2000m higher than your start point.

I don't know how your watch works, so maybe I was just stating what you were already thinking...

the watch picks up any change in altitude so should pick up total ascent for the ride, granted it'll miss out very small changes due to the sweep time but no where near 1000m. Like I said it was pretty accurate at Walna Scar. Besides it's impossible to be 2000m higher than your start point in the UK

Sorry about typos off work with a pig cold and had 4 cups of coffee!!!!!