[Tagging] Way beneath overhanging cliff

Kevin Kenny kevin.b.kenny+osm at gmail.com
Tue Oct 3 19:46:31 UTC 2017


I'm just wondering how best to tag to clarify a situation that I've
encountered twice now.

If you look at the Indian Ladder and Escarpment trails on
http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/42.6529/-74.0150 you'll see that
there are several points where they nearly cross. Actually, at a
couple of those points, they do cross - at an elevation difference of
about 40 metres, as the Indian Ladder trail passes under an
overhanging cliff.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ke9tv/34047784
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ke9tv/34048525
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ke9tv/6235914435

Understandably, GPS is pretty wonky down there, so the trail in OSM is
a combination of GPS tracks and pure guesswork. (I'm not in a position
to get down there with transit, sighting rod, and chains, which would
be the only way to do it right.)

There's a similar situation with an overhanging cliff on the west
slope of Sugarloaf Mountain here
http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/42.1316/-74.1525
The trail down from the summit swings north, drops down a rock chimney
under some wedged boulders, and then turns back beneath an overhang
for about 60 m. Here, I've copied and pasted a (simplified) GPS track
that I don't really trust - I know it's wrong under the overhang. But
I don't even have a good source for guesswork. The available aerial
imagery, such as https://binged.it/2hNh8Mc , all has bad stitching and
warping artifacts owing to the complex topography, and for the most
part has the relevant area in deep shadow where I can see nearly
nothing. Even the wonky GPS signal is better than what I see on Bing,
Mapbox and such.

In any case, my question is: is there particular tagging that I should
be using where ways cross because of natural topography?
'covered=yes'? Something else?

Kevin



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