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Comments
5 comments
This would be very helpful to quickly plan and track SAR missions instead of manually calculating alpha angles along potential routes. OnX has "Avalanche Runout Simulator"
Bumping this! Would help more quickly make decisions in terrain with potential overhead hazard.
Another bump for this after last week's tragedy.
I've been a pro subscriber for years, but also use other apps here and there. I used Caltopo on desktop and Gaia on mobile for a long time, then as Caltopo dramatically improved the mobile experience over the last several years I switched almost exclusively to Caltopo on both platforms. I long resisted onX because the hard sell marketing annoyed me a bit (as much as I like Cody T) and the suggested route features weren't that useful. Got a cheap promo subscription in December 2024 and it was cool enough, but let it lapse. Especially because their ATES and avalanche runout features did not have widespread coverage yet. They don't really have much value added for power users.
Then I noticed last week that now they do have Tahoe area coverage for the ATES and runout layers. See the onX screenshot (next to the Caltopo screenshot) that Steve Reynaud posted on the Frog Lake incident report.
As far as I can tell these features shouldn't be proprietary to onX. ATES was originally developed by Parks Canada and GoatMAPs also has it as a layer (though it isn't as updated as onX). And then for "avalanche runout" (aka a simulated alpha angle layer), onX uses a tool called FlowPy, which says it's open source. If there is a way to get it or something similar as a Caltopo layer, it'd be super awesome. As it is, I picked up onX again on a promo rate (like $12/year) for those layers. I'll still use Caltopo as primary, but may reference the onX layers when/if we get conditions like last week again.
Matt Jacobs I'm sure you've thought about this. In the works?
Starting with addressing the final comment, we've talked about variations of this internally, as well as conversations with industry professionals outside the company. At this time, and based on those conversations, we think it makes sense to focus our efforts on objective terrain data and steer clear of modeling.
ATES was originally conceived as something applied at a basin or region level. You decide what categories of terrain you are comfortable planning in given current conditions, find areas matching those categories, and then proceed to plan your tour within them. I haven't yet seen a clear picture of how this process translates to a "micro-ATES" implementation, where staying within a category means making small scale route finding decisions based on an ATES visualization.
Personally, I think runout simulations (currently available both as a standalone layer and on which auto-ATES is based) have more promise, but they are just that - simulations. I can only speak to my own experience, but the implementations I've personally seen are not based on objective model parameters. Instead, parameters are tuned by hand until the model looks right for a given location. From my understanding, this need for manual tuning is why existing layers have been released incrementally on a regional basis, instead of a nationwide rollout. For us as a company, we simply don't have enough confidence in this modeling process to put a layer in front of people that we're willing to stand behind. Maybe we're wrong, and maybe evidence will change our stance in the future.
We've experimented in the past with both alpha angle calculation (measuring the alpha angle between two points) and projection (highlighting everything within a given alpha angle of a point or given slope steepness). One issue we've run into - and this applies to runout simulations as well - is that a model of historic-level avalanche potential is way conservative for a typical recreational day, to the point of providing limited practical value.
When we took our experimental alpha angle tools and ran them by avalanche professionals, the feedback we got was that they did not accomplish the task that we (and I think you all) were hoping they would. I'm paraphrasing and not speaking as an expert, but essentially, alpha angles are useful for fixed infrastructure planning as we can estimate the likely alpha angle of a historic slide. But there's no commonly accepted alpha angle for identifying safe zones in the conditions we typically recreate in, short of using historic numbers.
Thanks Matt. That all makes sense.
The need for regional tweaking is how I understand it too. In a conversation I was having with a buddy, he was skeptical of the onX runout simulation layer so I let him use my login to play around with it.. He wanted to compare the layer to a large path along the 80 Corridor that he had climaxed in Spring 2011 and wiped out a bunch of ~50+ YO trees. He scrolled to it and... the layer didn't cover it because it was too far west/out of typical ski terrain for inclusion in that layer. So there's an issue.
All that said, I still think a layer that had the historic numbers would be useful at times. 100% agree that for most rec days it isn't that useful, but for exceptional days, ski traverse planning, and similar, I think it would be. Though where in the value-added continuum compared to other features is an open question.
I really appreciate the detailed response. And also appreciate where the company has been going recently.
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