Tag:climbing=route
 climbing =
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A path by which a climber reaches the top of a steep mountain, a rock face or an ice-covered obstacle. 
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| Group: sport |
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| Status: in use |
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A climbing route is a path by which a climber reaches the top of a steep mountain, a rock face or an ice-covered obstacle.
How to map
If you want to map a route as a way, you can do so by drawing a way and tagging it climbing=. It is common practice to draw a route in the direction from the bottom to the top. If a route is bi-directional, like a ridge traverse, the direction of the line can be chosen arbitrarily.
A common practice is to tag the bottom and top node of a route with climbing=route_bottom and climbing=route_top respectively, in the cases where there is a clear top and bottom.
Multi-pitch routes can be mapped in two ways.
- If they are a continuous route, they can simply be added as a
climbing=withclimbing:pitches=*tag showing the number of pitches on the route. - Each stage/pitch of a multi-pitch route can be mapped as a climbing route. A relation that represents the whole route can include all of them together. There could also be a
highway=pathconnecting the climbing routes. These sections can also be added to the relation. The route relation would have the name of the route.
Alternatives
Climbing routes can be mapped with a single node marking the bottom of the route, tagged as climbing=route_bottom. This should ideally only be done if the route is near vertical and hence doesn't travel much in the longitude/latitude-plane. This should also be avoided if the route has paths connecting both to the bottom and the top, since one cannot rely on routing engines understanding that a climbing route is a potential barrier when it is represented as a single node on a continuous path.