BORROWED FROM THE HOKKAIDO YUKIYAMA GUIDE
There’s nothing new under the sun, and this goes for our difficulty ratings. We’ve borrowed the system from the wildly popular Hokkaido ski touring guidebook (in Japanese). Here’s the details. As you’ll see, the points are heavily weighted in favor of effort required for the climb, but overall, the ratings are evenly split between strenuousness and technicality.
STRENUOUSNESS
The first two difficulty rating categories refer to how strenuous a route is.
Vertical gain (40 possible points): How many meters one must climb on any given route is a good indication of how fit one needs to be to complete a route. This measure makes up 40% of the total possible ‘difficulty points’ a route can get.
Climbing time (10 possible points): The longer one spends climbing uphill, the more energy is used, so this is somewhat of a an ‘additive’ score to the vertical gain score above. Some climbs might be over quickly…some may carry on for an eternity. NOTE: This only applies to the ascent portion of a route, not the total time to complete a route.
TECHNICALITY
The next three categories refer to how technical a route is.
Altitude (10 possible points): The higher one climbs, the colder and windier conditions one might encounter. Particularly when a route goes beyond the treeline, good skills and knowledge are required to travel safely.
Hazards (20 possible points): This rather subjective rating scale category particularly refers to objective hazards such as exposure to avalanche risk, consequential falls, and any climbs that may require equipment other than just skis and ski poles (e.g., boot crampons and/or ice axes).
Navigation (20 possible points): This is another subjective rating scale, but routes that score high on the navigation difficulty scale either cross complex and varied terrain, or involve travel across relatively featureless mountainous areas where low visibility would make navigation extremely difficult without the aid of a GPS.
| STRENUOUSNESS | Vertical gain |
D / 25 points 300m or less |
C / 30 points Up to 600m |
B / 35 points Up to 900m |
A / 40 points Over 900m |
| Time climbing |
D / 0 points Up to 2hrs |
C / 3 points Up to 3.5hrs |
B / 6 points Up to 5hrs |
A / 10 points Over 5hrs | |
| TECHNICALITY | Altitude |
D / 0 points Up to 700m |
C / 3 points Up to 900m |
B / 6 points Up to 1300m |
A / 10 points Over 1300m |
| Hazards |
D / 0 points |
C / 6 points |
B / 12 points |
A / 20 points | |
| Navigation |
D / 0 points |
C / 6 points |
B / 12 points |
A / 20 points | |
| Totals |
Each route gets a score on each category in this rubric, for a total score out of 100. This score is divided by 10 to get a 1-10 score. Decimal places are rounded to the nearest 0.5 (e.g., 7.2/10 is rounded to 7/10). Routes are then given the following overall difficulty categories. Beginner: 0 - 5 Intermediate: 5.5 - 7 Advanced: 7.5 - 10 | ||||
WHERE CAN I SEE THE DETAILED DIFFICULTY RATINGS?
Overall difficulty ratings are part of each route’s stats/data on each route’s detailed route overview page. Specific detailed difficulty ratings come in the form of a popup (when clicking on a difficulty rating icon or text), or they can be found in the Safety Notes sections of each ski touring route.
