The Linville Gorge Trail Grade Study is part of the LGMAPS Google Earth Collection.
This map of Linville Gorge trails uses heat map coloring to show which trails are relatively level (blue) and which are steep (red). It’s based on the 40′ elevation change increments of 7.5′ topo maps, and is reasonably accurate though not perfect.
Here are some helpful hints to get you started:
- Take a tour! If you don’t know how to move around in Google Earth, you can still enjoy the map by just double-clicking on the “Take a tour!” item included at the top of the Trail Grade Study. You can also move around by double clicking on items in the Trail Grade Study “Quick Views” folder.
- Check and uncheck boxes to show/hide LG Grade features.
- Google Earth can be quirky sometimes, drawing things in the wrong place or not at all, but it usally works fine. If things look weird, click on the map once and then navigate a bit using SHIFT + arrow keys because that seems to reset the display.
Trail grade is a measure of trail steepness, and is simply the amount you go up/down divided by the amount you walked forward. So if you climb 10 feet after walking 100 feet forward, that’s a 10% grade. Here’s the map legend that shows which colors match which grade:
| 0% | 12% | 24% | |||
| 1% | 13% | 25% | |||
| 2% | 14% | 26% | |||
| 3% | 15% | 27% | |||
| 4% | 16% | 28% | |||
| 5% | 17% | 29% | |||
| 6% | 18% | 30% | |||
| 7% | 19% | 31% | |||
| 8% | 20% | 32% | |||
| 9% | 21% | 33% | |||
| 10% | 22% | 34% | |||
| 11% | 23% | 35% | |||
| All grades 36% or greater use the same color: | |||||
CREDITS: Trail grade analysis and original project impetus from Nick and Jon. About 2/3’s of the GPS track data comes from the 2013 edition of The LinvilleGorge.net Trail Map. Mountains-to-Sea Trail analysis was made simply by observing the trailbed on Google Earth satellite imagery. Marshall Weatherman supplied Pine Gap track data. KML coding by Kevin.
Known Issues and Feature Requests
Current release was produced 15 October 2014. Known issues include:
- This first release of the LG Grade map focused on official trails, even though grade data for some unofficial trails has already been calculated as part of the project. Future versions will include an increasing number of unofficial trails and trail proposals.
- Sitting Bear, Wiseman’s View, and Linville Falls trails need to be added and then included in the tour.
- Numerous track tweaks have already been called for. Some are pending comment from Nebo regarding official trail locations. Others are just minor errors that need fixing.
- Longer trails may need multiple labels.
- Fly-through tour of the longer trails (LGT, MST)