Teaching Valhalla That Hiking Is Not Flat
ยท 9 min read
From Morskie Oko, the lake under the highest peaks of the Polish Tatras, a trail climbs to Czarny Staw pod Rysami, the next lake up. It is 500 metres long and rises 180 metres. The time written for it is 30 minutes up and 20 minutes down. At Valhalla's default walking speed of 5.1 km/h, the distance alone takes six minutes.
Our routing runs on Valhalla, and its tiles already store the elevation along every edge. In June we tried to turn that elevation into hiking times that agree with the times people walk by. Here is what we compared against, the models we tried on the way, and the curve that went into the tiles.