Elevation Profiles and Tours

There is the kind of bicycle touring we advocate and then there is Tour de France touring. Way different pursuits but with some similar concerns: how many miles am I pedaling today? where/what am I going to eat? and what is the elevation I've climbed/descended?

The last one can be a real trick to determine accurately and consistently. Why is this? It all depends on how the data was calculated or measured. I'm not even going to try and explain the ins and outs of this process because it boggles my own brain.

I admit it's a pretty consistent piece of feedback we receive from cyclists who use our maps, our tour participants in particular, they want better elevation profiles. Sadly, there is little comfort in knowing we aren't the only ones who have this issue. There were some Seattle Livestrong riders who found that their GPS units gave them different overall elevation information than what was stated on the maps.

At the end of the day, what I can say is this: we do the best we can to represent a route's estimated elevation profile and we know sometimes it will conflict with reality. We wish there was a more accurate source of information from which we could gather the data. (If you have suggestions, please chime in!)

graphic by Adventure Cycling Routes & Mapping staff

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GeoPoints Bulletin is written by Jennifer 'Jenn' Milyko, an Adventure Cycling cartographer, and appears weekly, highlighting curious facts, figures and persons from Adventure Cycling's route network with tips and hints for personal route creation thrown in for good measure.