UPDATE: I’ve uploaded a new profile with box gradients on this post: Updated RAAM elevation profile

Wow, it took a lot of computing power, but this morning the elevation profile I had started for RAAM yesterday finished. Part of the reason it took so long is that my algorithm scans for the highest and lowest point as well as all gradients along the route greater than 5%. This may not sound too difficult, but finding the exact starting and ending points of a hill allowing for smaller downhills to be included in the hill if the general slope is still up … is very difficult. To make it feasible, I had to filter the entire route down to 5000 data points or roughly one data point every km which is why the total length is shortened by almost 45 miles. So it looks like the total climbing for RAAM will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 150,000 feet of climbing for the 3005 mile route or roughly 4 times flatter than my normal riding. The profile below doesn’t show the gradients because I thought it would be too hard to see them so I checked “hide gradients”, which still does the calculations but doesn’t draw them on the map. Hopefully, I’ll have an updated version by tomorrow that has what I call “box gradients” — i.e., a box drawn around the climb with the vertical diff and average gradient.

topocreator.com – raam elevation profile (click to enlarge)