Elevation Profiles!
So I finally broke down and bought a GPS unit. Okay, okay, okay, I didn't really "break down"... I EAGERLY went online and bought a GPS unit. After intensive, scrutinizing, painful, obsessive minutes of research, I decided on a Garmin E-trex Vista HcX. I present it to you in all it's glory: AAAAAHHHHH!
Okay, okay, so not that great, right? Well, it has a color screen and a high sensitive GPS sensor which is REALLY cool because you can still receive accurate guidance in slot canyons and under tree cover... (For those that don't know, GPS stands for Global Positioning System. There is a great article here about GPS that a does a WAY better job at explaining than I can. If you don't know much about GPS, or even if you do, check out the article) It also has a navigation system that can give turn by turn directions, and it has maps with roads and topographical data... But wait... there's more... It has an electronic compass and a barometric altimeter so I can get more accurate elevation data. SO if I get lost on a state route, I can just look at my receiver and find out where I need to go. Kathy Jo also thought this would be a good idea. We both really like to go hiking, and she likes to know how far we have gone, and the GPS unit can tell us just that. ANYWAY, I have had two GPS units in the past, one broke when I was on a ride and my receiver fell under a log and got smashed and the other just stopped working 2 days after the one year warranty expired. I plan on taking REALLY good care of this one. I bought this unit after deciding to take on this project so I could add elevation profiles to the blogs entries of the rides I do, so I could see how much climbing and descending I did on my ride, and so you all could see too. The unit takes nearly constant measurements of distance traveled and on elevation so creating an elevation profile is simply a matter of graphing elevation against distance traveled. Here is one such profile of SR-173 one of the rides I did recently.
Now, I plan on showing the profiles of the routes from where they start to where they end. For SR-173, it starts at about 5000 feet, (at SR-111) rises to 5047, then drops to 4300 feet, (around the Jordan River) where it rises to about 4350 at the end of the route (State St in Murray or US-89). For some routes, like this one, that are short, I will ride them as an out and back, (from one end to the other and back again) or I will enter the route somewhere in the middle, ride to one end, turn around, ride to the other end and turn around again, or continue on to somewhere else. For SR-173, I entered that route somewhere about the 8.5 mile mark, climbed to the 0.0 mile mark, then turned around and descended to the 9.9 mile mark and continued on. SO for some rides, even though the look like a descent the whole time, I will also be climbing, or the opposite may be true. The ride may look like a climb, while I may be riding it backwards and will be descending the entire time... only time will tell... oooooohhhh. Look for profiles on all of my blog entries in the future, and even some in past rides. Thanks for reading.
Chris
Okay, okay, so not that great, right? Well, it has a color screen and a high sensitive GPS sensor which is REALLY cool because you can still receive accurate guidance in slot canyons and under tree cover... (For those that don't know, GPS stands for Global Positioning System. There is a great article here about GPS that a does a WAY better job at explaining than I can. If you don't know much about GPS, or even if you do, check out the article) It also has a navigation system that can give turn by turn directions, and it has maps with roads and topographical data... But wait... there's more... It has an electronic compass and a barometric altimeter so I can get more accurate elevation data. SO if I get lost on a state route, I can just look at my receiver and find out where I need to go. Kathy Jo also thought this would be a good idea. We both really like to go hiking, and she likes to know how far we have gone, and the GPS unit can tell us just that. ANYWAY, I have had two GPS units in the past, one broke when I was on a ride and my receiver fell under a log and got smashed and the other just stopped working 2 days after the one year warranty expired. I plan on taking REALLY good care of this one. I bought this unit after deciding to take on this project so I could add elevation profiles to the blogs entries of the rides I do, so I could see how much climbing and descending I did on my ride, and so you all could see too. The unit takes nearly constant measurements of distance traveled and on elevation so creating an elevation profile is simply a matter of graphing elevation against distance traveled. Here is one such profile of SR-173 one of the rides I did recently.
Now, I plan on showing the profiles of the routes from where they start to where they end. For SR-173, it starts at about 5000 feet, (at SR-111) rises to 5047, then drops to 4300 feet, (around the Jordan River) where it rises to about 4350 at the end of the route (State St in Murray or US-89). For some routes, like this one, that are short, I will ride them as an out and back, (from one end to the other and back again) or I will enter the route somewhere in the middle, ride to one end, turn around, ride to the other end and turn around again, or continue on to somewhere else. For SR-173, I entered that route somewhere about the 8.5 mile mark, climbed to the 0.0 mile mark, then turned around and descended to the 9.9 mile mark and continued on. SO for some rides, even though the look like a descent the whole time, I will also be climbing, or the opposite may be true. The ride may look like a climb, while I may be riding it backwards and will be descending the entire time... only time will tell... oooooohhhh. Look for profiles on all of my blog entries in the future, and even some in past rides. Thanks for reading.Chris
I think you should do ALL the highways, even the less-than-five-mile ones. Why leave the little ones out? Also I am relieved to learn you are using GPS. Don't get lost.
ReplyDeleteThe only problem with doing the little ones, is that some of the little ones are less than one mile long. Maybe some day...
ReplyDelete