A mountain route print is a climb, a hike or a ski day you recorded, drawn on a map that shows the mountain: contour lines, relief and the elevation profile of your effort under it. It is made from your own file, so it is the line you actually took up, not the official route of a famous col.
Three backgrounds that show terrain
| Background | For | What it draws |
|---|---|---|
| Topo | climbs, hikes, the Camino, fell and fjeld | contour lines with heavier index contours, hillshade, forest, field, rock and snow |
| Piste | a ski day or a season | the runs at full weight and the lifts dashed, with the terrain dimmed underneath |
| Satellite | high mountains, glaciers, passes | aerial imagery at print resolution, with roads and names on top (satellite route prints) |
Topo and Piste are drawn from Mapbox Terrain as vector data in the poster's own colours. The contours are lines, not a picture of lines, so a 70×100 is as sharp as a 30×40. The relief is shading drawn as areas, not a grey photo filter laid over the map, which is why it takes the colourway you pick instead of greying it.
The contour lines are a real map's
Contour lines come with their height, and every fifth and tenth line is an index contour, the heavier one a hiking map labels. We keep that distinction: index contours are drawn heavier, the lines in between lighter. Where the slope is steep and the lines crowd together on the sheet, the in-between ones are thinned, so a high mountain does not turn into a solid block of ink.
An elevation profile that agrees with your legs
Pick the elevation profile as one of the figures under the line and it shows the profile of the effort. Barometric altimeters drift during a long day, and we correct that drift only on a loop, where the start and the finish are at the same height and any difference must be drift. On a point-to-point climb the difference is the mountain. So Alpe d'Huez prints as 1,100 m of climbing, not as a hump that goes up and comes back down.
Several days in the mountains join into one profile in date order: multi-day route prints.
Crop it to the climb
A ride up a mountain usually starts with an hour of valley. Trim the start and finish in the editor, or snap the print to a Strava segment, and the numbers are worked out again for the part that is left: distance, time and climbing of the climb itself, not the day.
The numbers that belong on a climb
Elevation gain, time, average speed or pace and, from a power meter, average and max watts with the peak marked. Heart rate with your own zones. One to four of them, from your file. What the numbers mean.
Sizes, paper, frame
30×40, 50×70 or 70×100 cm on Museum 250 gsm or Classic 170 gsm uncoated matte paper, from 319 kr, or framed in pine wood behind acrylic from 799 kr. A long climb with structure suits 50×70 or 70×100. Every specification is on one page.
Open the editor on Topo. All the ways to print a route are on Strava prints. Epic Efforts is not affiliated with Strava or Mapbox.
