Shared Illusions

This post is by Charlie

Tomorrow we leave Conques for part 2 of our Chemin de Saint Jacques.  When I look at the elevation profile for our morning walk, I see this:

After fretting about it for a bit I realized that the scales on the graph create a misleading impression.   Although we will climb about 350 meters in the first 5 kilometers it won’t be the near vertical trek as it appears in the diagram.

Retrieving some basic trigonometry from the dust bin of my brain,  I determined that the horizontal axis can be considered the measure of a hypotenuse, and the slope of the ascent can be determined using a sine function.   The steepest part accordingly will average about 8° with an overall average for the initial climb of about 5°.  (I used a different map to get a more accurate estimate of distance and elevation)

Looks like we won’t be needing pitons and rope after all.