Scottish Munros: Actual and Predicted Route Times
I accumulated a lot of data whilst doing the round of the Munros which I originally included in graphical form in a now-defunct website of mine. I'm in the process of re-formatting - and where appropriate, re-analysing - some of this information to add as background to my Flickr Munro sets, starting here with Naismith's Rule.
I'll perhaps be adding more detail later, but the main points are as follows:
The Munros were completed in 137 separate routes, but times were not recorded for 28 of them. The winter and two-day trips and those involving a lot of scrambling (mainly on Skye) were excluded, resulting in 72 qualifying routes.
The distances walked and heights climbed were derived from the OS maps, and the recorded times corrected (rather simplistically) for rest breaks. In total, 1401km were walked and 85,360m were climbed in 462 hours. Applying the standard allowance of 1hr/600m of ascent implies an average effective walking pace of about 4.38km/hr (ie 85360/600 + 1401/4.38 = 462). This is quite a bit slower than the 4.83km/hr metric equivalent of the standard Naismith's Rule (3 miles/hour), but fairly close to the 4.5km/hr rate used in the Scottish Mountaineering Club guidebooks. There are several factors that could account for the slower rate, but route-finding difficulties in conditions of poor visibility is probably one of the more important ones, as the vast majority of the hills were new to me at the time, and navigation was by map and compass alone.
The graph shows the correlation of actual and predicted (for want of a better word!) walking times for the 72 qualifying routes using the modified Naismith's Rule:
Time (hrs) = Height Climbed (m)/600 + Distance Walked (km)/4.38
It also includes boundary lines denoting 25% margins to give some indication of which routes fell significantly outside of the predicted values.
The routes falling out-of-bounds were:
Route 40: Geal Charn (Section 5) (photo)
Route 66: Mount Keen (Section 7)
Route 113: Meall Chuaich (Section 5) (photo)
Route 119: Fionn Bheinn (Section 14)
Route 29: The Saddle - Sgurr na Sgine (Section 10) (photo)
Route 33: Bidean a' Ghlas Thuill - Sgurr Fiona (An Teallach) (Section 14) (photo)
Route 87: Aonach Beag - Aonach Mor - Carn Mor Dearg - Ben Nevis (Section 4) (photo)
The largest discrepancies were for Routes 40 and 87. The rapid pace set for Geal Charn is explained in the photo! Route 87 was a very demanding day and the pace was slowed by a combination of badly sunburnt legs (from an outing the previous day) and two excessively steep and time-consuming descents - which are not adequately accounted for by Naismith's Rule.
It is interesting to note that the 12 shortest routes were all completed in under the predicted times, which implies that a better correlation could in theory have been obtained by applying Tranter's Correction. However, as fitness level was never determined, this could not be investigated.
Note: My Flickr Munro photos are grouped into the SMC guidebook Sections and not individual routes. The easiest way to see any additional photos taken during the routes listed above is to follow the link back to the relevant Section (from the "This photo also appears in" link), where the photos are ordered sequentially.
Scottish Munros: Actual and Predicted Route Times
I accumulated a lot of data whilst doing the round of the Munros which I originally included in graphical form in a now-defunct website of mine. I'm in the process of re-formatting - and where appropriate, re-analysing - some of this information to add as background to my Flickr Munro sets, starting here with Naismith's Rule.
I'll perhaps be adding more detail later, but the main points are as follows:
The Munros were completed in 137 separate routes, but times were not recorded for 28 of them. The winter and two-day trips and those involving a lot of scrambling (mainly on Skye) were excluded, resulting in 72 qualifying routes.
The distances walked and heights climbed were derived from the OS maps, and the recorded times corrected (rather simplistically) for rest breaks. In total, 1401km were walked and 85,360m were climbed in 462 hours. Applying the standard allowance of 1hr/600m of ascent implies an average effective walking pace of about 4.38km/hr (ie 85360/600 + 1401/4.38 = 462). This is quite a bit slower than the 4.83km/hr metric equivalent of the standard Naismith's Rule (3 miles/hour), but fairly close to the 4.5km/hr rate used in the Scottish Mountaineering Club guidebooks. There are several factors that could account for the slower rate, but route-finding difficulties in conditions of poor visibility is probably one of the more important ones, as the vast majority of the hills were new to me at the time, and navigation was by map and compass alone.
The graph shows the correlation of actual and predicted (for want of a better word!) walking times for the 72 qualifying routes using the modified Naismith's Rule:
Time (hrs) = Height Climbed (m)/600 + Distance Walked (km)/4.38
It also includes boundary lines denoting 25% margins to give some indication of which routes fell significantly outside of the predicted values.
The routes falling out-of-bounds were:
Route 40: Geal Charn (Section 5) (photo)
Route 66: Mount Keen (Section 7)
Route 113: Meall Chuaich (Section 5) (photo)
Route 119: Fionn Bheinn (Section 14)
Route 29: The Saddle - Sgurr na Sgine (Section 10) (photo)
Route 33: Bidean a' Ghlas Thuill - Sgurr Fiona (An Teallach) (Section 14) (photo)
Route 87: Aonach Beag - Aonach Mor - Carn Mor Dearg - Ben Nevis (Section 4) (photo)
The largest discrepancies were for Routes 40 and 87. The rapid pace set for Geal Charn is explained in the photo! Route 87 was a very demanding day and the pace was slowed by a combination of badly sunburnt legs (from an outing the previous day) and two excessively steep and time-consuming descents - which are not adequately accounted for by Naismith's Rule.
It is interesting to note that the 12 shortest routes were all completed in under the predicted times, which implies that a better correlation could in theory have been obtained by applying Tranter's Correction. However, as fitness level was never determined, this could not be investigated.
Note: My Flickr Munro photos are grouped into the SMC guidebook Sections and not individual routes. The easiest way to see any additional photos taken during the routes listed above is to follow the link back to the relevant Section (from the "This photo also appears in" link), where the photos are ordered sequentially.