Technical information, news, research, and opinion on avalanches, snow safety, and winter backcountry travel.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Perception, Maps, Traps

I remember, when we could sleep on stones, now we lay together in whispers and moansU2

I've been working on several projects for the last few years and I wanted to share some output. These findings are related to the statistical model discussed in this post. Rather than a lengthy discussion, I'm simply going to post the images with brief descriptions.

The raster content of these images is used to analyse cells of the terrain for some aspects of exposure to avalanches. Other parts of the statistical modeling rely on data pulled from custom 3D models. This includes variables such as surface area, cumulative slope angle, and terrain trap statistics.

Figure 1.1. Terrain near Paradise, Mount Rainier National Park. The Jackson Visitor Centre is near the upper centre of the image. The Tatoosh range is at the bottom. This image uses natural lighting. Full size image is available here.



Figure 1.2. Terrain near Paradise, Mount Rainier National Park. This image uses slope angle shading. Full size image is available here.



Figure 1.3. Terrain near Paradise, Mount Rainier National Park. This image uses ambient occlusion to determine line-of-sight. Line-of-sight is poorest in the dark areas, but may be relatively poorer in any area that is darker than any other area. This model does not account for trees, and is therefore not easily applicable at the micro-scale. Many dark areas are also terrain traps. Full size image is available here.



Figure 1.4. Terrain near Eldorado, North Cascades National Park. This image uses natural lighting. Full size image is available here.



Figure 1.5. Terrain near Eldorado, North Cascades National Park. This image uses slope angle shading. In addition to making it easy to see slope angles, this image makes it very easy to see areas that are convoluted. Travel is difficult in convoluted terrain, and the skiing is usually pretty bad. Full size image is available here.




Figure 1.6. Terrain near Eldorado, North Cascades National Park. This image uses ambient occlusion to determine line-of-sight. Line-of-sight is poorest in the dark areas. Have you ever looked at a contour map and wondered where you might have route-finding problems? Many dark areas are also terrain traps. Full size image is available here.


Figure 1.7. Terrain near Snoqualmie Pass. This image uses natural lighting. Full size image is available here.



Figure 1.8. Terrain near Snoqualmie Pass. This image uses slope angle shading. In addition to making it easy to see slope angles, this image makes it very easy to see areas that are convoluted. Travel is difficult in convoluted terrain, and the skiing is usually pretty bad. Full size image is available here.



Figure 1.9. Terrain near Snoqualmie Pass. This image uses ambient occlusion to determine line-of-sight. Line-of-sight is poorest in the dark areas. Many dark areas are also terrain traps. Full size image is available here.

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