High Sierra Topix

Don't rely on the contour shading! These are just averages over distance and miss easy step downs

It roughly cuts straight through the extreme gradient (purple area). This is the deceptive part. For example, imagine 5 switchbacks. Each is 50ft long, 5 across and 30ft in height (~30 deg incline). The contour shading will average this out to a steep gradient: 150ft height across 25ft depth. That is 6ft up for every 1ft forward!

Yup yup, just trying to orient to your description. Gracias.

I found out pretty quickly that lines spaced far apart don't mean much if the lines are really squiggly. Upper Relief to Ridge Lake is where I learned that. I mean, there's probably a route in there somewhere, but also a lot of travel ending in huge drops.

Upper Relief to Granite Dome is one of my favorite cross country routes, but yeah, beware the squigglies.