Maps featured in the most current edition of Climbing Magazine -We all have a gut feel about which places are the best to live for climbing. However, I wanted to see how things would look if livability based upon climbing was put on a map. The result are the three maps below. The first map only factors in crags within 100 kilometers, the second 200 kilometers, and the third 400 kilometers. For more information about the methods see the poster in my July posting. You can also save the images by clicking on them to enlarge them and then right clicking and selecting save.
6 comments:
Cool maps, Tom! Congrats on getting published. I put a link for you on my blog, do you want to put a link for me on yours? colleenbean.blogspot.com
Very cool maps! Glad to confirm I live in a wasteland for climbing :)
Congrats on getting it published.
This is really neat! But, I'm curious how you counted the "crags"? I'm surprised that the Red River Gorge in eastern Kentucky is only light blue, while the New River seems to be hot red. I've climbed in both places, and I think there are more developed routes in Kentucky.
It would be interesting if you could show this by rating as well, or trad vs sport. Or include ice climbing. There's lots of cool possibilities for this! :)
Kate,
I like your idea about comparing trad and sport. I think that the results would come out very different for each. For example, I was a bit surprised that Salt Lake City came out in 8th place. It would take a bit of work, but if somebody was interested they could assign seperate trad and sport ratings to each crag (or bouldering and alpine climbing for that matter).
I used the data straight out of Rock N Road to make these maps. The weights came from the quality rating that Tim Toula assigned to each crag with 5 being the highest and 0 being the lowest. Large crags, such as New River Gorge or the Gunks are shown as several smaller crags. Number of routes was not explicitely used, although I think that it might be a better measure.
My next project will be to develop a second series of maps using only closed areas, however, this will have to wait until I finish my master's thesis.
Might as well throw climbing gyms in there too. I was in Orlando over the weekend and went to a pretty neat one. Florida has no natural rock whatsoever, unless you like climbing gravel or better yet coral reefs in Key West!
How many times have I sat around and wondered this myself? Great maps, and just as I would have expected. I've done something like it by hand, but only Colorado and points west and only the "mega crags".
Nice work!
Mike
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