Climbers care quite a bit about surprise roofs, slabby boulder problems, and much in between.
A quick-to-eyeball index of climb steepness would be nice for many climbers.
Aside from a climb's rating,
there's little that affects your experience more than a climb's steepness.
I can't climb slab
and It's too steep
are common refrains.
A good visualization should be versatile. Avoid color dependence; it can clash with color schemes or be difficult for users with color vision issues. Be clear. A bit of mandatory initial education is okay, but for a trained user, the message should be obvious. It also must clearly differentiate between a wide range of climbs.
For testing, we'll use a diverse selection of well-known climbs:
pros
This fails for steep climbs. The awkward rough edge is that it's too similar to the profile of a wall. For a vertical climb, it will look just like and match the cross-section of a wall. However, for a traverse, it AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
It's not immediately obvious which side of the line you're climbing on.
The idea here was to be a bit more compact and produce a predictable size.
Obvious issues revolved around segments similar levels of steepness; They overlap and hide each other. It's also hard to see context within a diagram. This visualization fail entirely when there are multiple small to medium segments defined.
Adding a ring at the outside edge, and making the rays of the "burst" opaque can help show context.
this is far too busy.
the downside here
somewhat similar to hillshade
could this exist?