Cross Country Passes - Polls for Difficulty?

[Wandering Daisy]

Good point with respect to what one perceives and what is objectively there! I think the experienced can judge pass difficulty once they get on it. Pass ratings should provide a "heads-up" for those less experienced. Ignorance really is bliss, until the unexpected happens.

One factor not often mentioned is route-finding. Some passes have very obvious routes. Others are really tricky; easy to get into the wrong gully or on the wrong ridge and find an entirely different difficulty. There also should be a heads-up on that. Perhaps best put into the written description. Some passes have developed a faint track resulting from so much more use. Once a path gets started, everyone seems to follow it. The resulting "pass" may not be its historical location. Some routes get wiped out with rockfall. And the best route over some passes is yet to be discovered! I really like to scout and explore when I go over passes just out of curiosity.

On easy passes, going down is often easier, just because it is less rigorous. But on more technical passes, going down is harder for me than going up. I like to plan my trips going UP the harder ones, especially those north facing. It is informative to know the difficulty of BOTH sides of a pass- they may not be the same.

[erutan]

Some good thoughts here - I personally have been trying to stay away from "easy" when describing something - the Class 3 at the top of Valor I prefer to describe as straightforward for the class and unexposed, show some photos, and then mention that *I* found it easy (which no one should really care about unless they have read enough of what I think of passes they've been over before to judge what that would mean).

I've struggled a bit when writing pass guides and have come to the conclusion that trying to just describe "how you move over terrain" (ala YDS) then factors that add "risk or unpleasantness" exposure / looseness / sliding terrain are very helpful to someone with at least middling experience - more on that in another thread blowing up here (please just just start here lol viewtopic.php?f=1&t=22124&start=30#p171019) as I'd just be repeating myself. Novices should be warned away from trying Class 3 with full packs and be made aware that Class 2 has a lot of variety and should require more research.

I personally like the ideas of polls - they are another piece of data along with a difficulty rating, write up, and follow up comments on a pass. Passes that see a lot of variance could be to perceptions of risk, bad routefinding, etc - versus which ones get a lot of consensus would be interesting to see as well just from a vaguely curious sociological viewpoint!