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Distance to Nearest Climbing

Original Post
Mike Skaug · · Boulder, CO · Joined Feb 2012 · Points: 15

Inspired by the "distance to nearest road" map produced by the USGS, I thought it would be interesting to see a distance to nearest climbing map.

Using the extensive list of climbing locations catalogued here at MP, I came up with this:

distance to nearest climbing

Of course there are some shortcomings to this analysis. The distance is "as the crow flies". What would be more interesting, but difficult to calculate, is driving/biking/walking distance. And all climbing areas are considered equal, so 1 mile from Yosemite is the same as 1 mile from Guadalupe Rock. We'll see, maybe version 2 will be "proximity to nearest good climbing".

--Mike

FrankPS · · Atascadero, CA · Joined Nov 2009 · Points: 276
Tim Lutz wrote:pretty cool but why are FL coasts red?
Ha ha. Good point. Maybe they're the coastal ranges of Florida. No, wait...
Ian G. · · PDX, OR · Joined Apr 2009 · Points: 280

Also, if you go to the exact middle of North Dakota it looks like there is a plethora of options ;)

Mike Skaug · · Boulder, CO · Joined Feb 2012 · Points: 15

Yeah, I've always been telling people that there is climbing in every state except Florida. I guess I'm wrong. For example: Wainwright Park Cliffs

And the big spot in the middle of North Dakota is the area North Dakota

So clearly, there are some peculiarities about the data, which represent the top level areas as defined on MP. For example, in California, climbing areas are grouped together into super-areas like Lake Tahoe

--Mike

Eli Buzzell · · noco · Joined Nov 2010 · Points: 5,507

Hey Mike, I'd be super curious as to how you entered the data, did you get it directly from MP and import it into ArcGIS or did you do the painstaking work yourself? How many hours have you put into this?
Also I can verify that Mississippi and Louisiana are awful places to be.

Mike Skaug · · Boulder, CO · Joined Feb 2012 · Points: 15

Eli,

I did everything with Python and various Python modules, including Beautiful Soup to extract the data and Basemap to do the geographic projections and plotting. I can give you more detail if your interested. It took less time than I thought it would. What took the longest was figuring out how to plot the final image with Basemap and matplotlib.

--Mike

Nick Wilder · · Boulder, CO · Joined Jan 2005 · Points: 4,098

Cool. Using more data, you could normalize it to "quality" rock climbing (using page views, ticks, and star data), which would be much more interesting and correct for FL, etc.

LMK if you'd like to be a "guest Factoid contributor" and I can share data that you can visualize.

mountainproject.com/scripts…

Hendrixson · · Littleton, CO · Joined Sep 2007 · Points: 3,290

Love it but your results are nonsensical. Your search only seems to use the top level GPS coordinates. You might need to dive deeper. It would also be useful to use the number of routes in addition to some sort of quality metric as suggested by Nick.

This reminds me of a similar article where the author tried to scientifically determine the best climbing town:

climbing.com/route/climberv…

I recall Road 'N Road being used as a reference for this or another study.

Harrison Harb · · Portland · Joined Aug 2008 · Points: 145

crack pot proof that NH is the best

David Joslin · · Eagle River, AK · Joined Jul 2012 · Points: 105

Alaska is always left out!

Eli Buzzell · · noco · Joined Nov 2010 · Points: 5,507
Mike Skaug wrote:Eli, I did everything with Python and various Python modules, including Beautiful Soup to extract the data and Basemap to do the geographic projections and plotting. I can give you more detail if your interested. It took less time than I thought it would. What took the longest was figuring out how to plot the final image with Basemap and matplotlib. --Mike
I am a GIS gumby and have no useful understanding of python, I appreciate the offer though
Mike Skaug · · Boulder, CO · Joined Feb 2012 · Points: 15

Here is an update the takes into account the number of routes at each area:

Proximity to Climbing map

It looks a lot different than before (sorry Florida). It's also a little less intuitive. So if you just want to visualize the number of routes at each area:

Number of Routes map

Hendrixson · · Littleton, CO · Joined Sep 2007 · Points: 3,290

Those plots are so cool!

BigFeet · · Texas · Joined May 2014 · Points: 385

Texas... the lone blue spot state.

Mike Mooney · · Silverthorne, CO · Joined Mar 2006 · Points: 0

Nice. Beats push pins in a map.

SteveF · · Fort Collins, CO · Joined Aug 2007 · Points: 32

This is really impressive. You should definitely take Nick up on his offer to do guest factoids.

Bill M · · Fort Collins, CO · Joined Jun 2010 · Points: 317

That is a great visualization. I do have a question about Kansas. The Prox. to Climbing map shows something going on in Western Kansas, but when I went to the MP map that puts the pins on climbing locations, I only see 5 routes and they are all within a few miles of the Nebraska border.

If you enjoy this take a look at Tufte's book "Visual Display of Quantitative Information."

Altered Ego · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Jul 2008 · Points: 0

This is a game changer! Wait, no it isn't. What does one do with this already fairly obvious information?

Eli Buzzell · · noco · Joined Nov 2010 · Points: 5,507
Long Duk Dong wrote:This is a game changer! Wait, no it isn't. What does one do with this already fairly obvious information?
Well in GIS, someone pays you money for the map that seemed pretty obvious. Because hey, now it's a map! With DATA!
Connor Newman · · Denver, CO · Joined Apr 2011 · Points: 55

These are some really cool maps, I wonder what the distribution of "empty" climbing would be. Maybe you could divide the # of routes in a given area by the MP users in said area. I just thought of this because the CO front range (where I live) is obviously a hot spot for routes, but I used to live in Reno, Nevada and I found that I got more climbing in there simply because there are less people, at least compared to many front range crags.

fossana · · leeds, ut · Joined Apr 2006 · Points: 13,318

Very cool, Mike. Clearly we need an MP hackathon day.

Guideline #1: Don't be a jerk.

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