A: Introduction

This repository holds a network topology about backcountry ski routes of the Alps. It serves as entry point of ski route raw data for Skitourenguru.

Caution: Please be aware that this repository is under construction. It will be fully functional from the Spring 2026 on!

Each region consists of two GeoJson files:

1. Segments: A collection of LineString features with a segment id.
2. Compositions: A collection of routes with attributes and a list of segment id's.

Goals:

• Complete set of ski routes throughout the whole Alps.
• High quality standards.
• Compliance with the requirements of nature conservation.
• OpenData (Medium Term Goal)

The exact data model description you find in this Technical Specification.

Remarks:

• Despite the formal definition of the format GeoJson it is possible to store the EPSG code in the node crs. See chapter 4 of RFC_7946.
• In order to support change-tracking, the coordinate precision must be set to two decimal digits.

B: Regions

1. Switzerland (RegionCode=1)

Format: GeoJson in EPSG=21781.

Issuer: All data of this folder were derived from the Ski-Routes, published by Swisstopo in cooperation with the Swiss Alpine Club.

License: Open Geo Data (OGD) License of Swisstopo.

Caution: The data only contains the subset of ski routes that fulfill the quality requirements of Skitourenguru. For the complete dataset see Ski-Routes.

Remark: EPSG will eventually be changed from 21781 to 2056.

2. Austria (RegionCode=2)

Format: GeoJson in EPSG=31287.

Issuer: Österreichischer Alpenverein.

License: Private license till 14. October 2026. From 15. October 2026 on published under CC BY-ND 4.0.

Remarks:

• Holds also South Tyrol (This is not a political statement!)

3. France (RegionCode=3)

Format: GeoJson in EPSG=2154.

Issuer: All data of this folder are created and maintained by the Petzl Foundation in cooperation with the Skitourenguru GmbH.

License: Creative Commons: CC BY-ND 4.0. Suggestion for the attribution: The ski routes are created and maintained Petzl Foundation in cooperation with the Skitourenguru GmbH.

Caution: The geometry of this data is highly abstracted, don't use it without the requiered smoothing. The qGis smooth function must be applied (ITERATIONS=4, OFFSET=0.25, MAX_ANGLE=180). The folder Derived Ski routes of France holds a smoothed version of the data (collection and network).

4. Italy (RegionCode=6)

Format: GeoJson in EPSG=32632.

Issuer: Skitourenguru GmbH.

License: Private license by Skitourenguru GmbH. Skitourenguru GmbH permits the usage of the data for private purpose. Aks the consent of Skitourenguru GmbH if you want to re-publish the data respectivly if you want to derive data from the raw data.

Remarks:

• South Tyrol is contained in Austria (This is not a political statement!)

Help needed Skitourenguru is looking for a person willing to complete the data set in Italy. The work can be partly paid.

Requiered skills:

• Experience with backcountry skiing
• Practical knowledge about backcountry areas in Italy
• Cartographic knowledge
• Understanding of avalanche terrain
• Affinity to IT
• If possible experience with qGis
• Open-minded
• Willing to work in a team

Contact Skitourenguru under about if you want to collaborate.

5. Germany (RegionCode=7)

Format: GeoJson in EPSG=31468.

Issuer: Deutcher Alpenverein.

License: Private license till 14. October 2026. From 15. October 2026 on published under CC BY-ND 4.0.

6. Slovenia (RegionCode=8)

Help needed Skitourenguru is looking for a person willing to digitalize ski routes in Slovenia. The work can be partly paid.

Requiered skills:

• Experience with backcountry skiing
• Practical knowledge about backcountry areas in Slovenia
• Cartographic knowledge
• Understanding of avalanche terrain
• Affinity to Slovenia
• If possible experience with qGis
• Open-minded
• Willing to work in a team

Contact Skitourenguru under about if you want to collaborate.

C: Derived data

Skitourenguru processes weekly (Monday 1:00h) the raw data contained in this repository and builds a SQLite / Spatialite RDBMS file containing a collection of routes covering the whole Alps. The automatic process performs the following steps:

1. Where needed (France) the routes are smoothed: (Chaiken: 3 Interations, Threashold 5 m).
2. Simplification (Douglas: Theashold: 1 m).
3. The network is converted to a route collection.
4. The routes are reprojected to the EPSG 3035.
5. Geospatial filter
6. The names (start and stop) are simplified where needed (Switzerland).
7. Route identifiers are made unique by adding a region code at the end of the id. The region codes are documented in chapter B.
8. The regions are merged.
9. The routes are filtered by length, target end type (Skitour = 1).
10. Attributes are added (lit: A hint about literature, in particular the editor Panico, wildlife: Distance to next nature protection area, pop: A popularity indicator, adiff: A difficulty grade automatically derived from terrain properties, sri: Standard rating indicators about the avalanche risk for 10 typical avalanche bulletins). If you need to know more about these attributes, click on a route on https://www.skitourenguru.com.
11. The route collection is verified.
12. Corridors are created
13. The vector file is converted into two raster formats
14. Finally the results are "published" on the Internet:

Alps as Vector in the SQLite / Spatialite RDBMS format.

Alps as Raster in the RMaps / Galileo format.

Alps as Raster in the MapBox-Tiles format.

License: The usage of this data is limited by the licenses documented in chapter B. Otherwise, the following applies: The usage of this data for private non-commercial purposes is allowed. All other usage is prohibited. In particular its not allowed to create derivates of the data (see ND in chapter B). Be aware, that this dataset not only contains data from the sources described in chapter B, but also additional attributes generated by Skiturenguru. If you want to use this data in a commercial context or re-publish them, contact Skitourenguru (see chapter G).

D: Disclaimer

While we strive to provide accurate and up-to-date information, we cannot guarantee the completeness or correctness of the data presented. The data issuers assume no guarantee and therefore no liability for the accuracy of the data in this repository.

E: Digitizing Tools

1. Digitizing in a network

In order to edit ski routes within a network topology, two tools were developped:

1. Routes Composer: A qGis plugin to edit routes within a network topology.
2. SAC Route Network Editor: A SQL based method to edit routes within a network topology.

2. Routes Composer

In the folder Batch or Bash you find an import and an export script. They can be used to convert the geojson files to a geopackage network that can be edited by the Routes Composer.

Windows (Batch)

In order to make sure the script works follow theses steps:

1. Copy the script to an other directory anywhere on your harddisk (Reason: You don't want to change the files in the repository).
2. In Settings.bat choose your working directories and the dataset you want to work with.
3. In Environment.bat you must set your GDAL path. As GDAL is contained in qGis, its the easiest solution just to adapt the qgis version number.
4. Now you can use the scripts ImportFromGithubToGpkg.bat and ExportFromGpkgToGithub.bat. You can open them with a Text-Editor to see what they are doing.
5. Make sure that Segments and Compositions auto-set their id: Open Attributes Form, click on id and enter under Default the Default value: maximum(id)+1.

Linux/MacOs (Bash)

1. Launch the script ImportFromGithubToGpkg.sh a first time, it will copy the settings file. Edit the Settings.sh file with the country name.
2. Launch the script again, it will create the corresponding gpkg file inside the country folder. You normally don't need to run it again - but if for some reason you lose the gpkg files, run again the script ImportFromGithubToGpkg.sh.
3. Add the layers to the project - all the changes made on the gpkg files will be ignored..
4. Make sure that Segments and Compositions auto-set their id: Open Attributes Form, click on id and enter under Default the Default value: maximum(id)+1.
5. Make some changes, and before committing your work, run the script ExportFromGpkgToGithub.sh. Commit and push.

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Principally the Compositions layer has no geometry. However the plugin can also create geometries from the Segments and handle them during editing. That means whenever you change the geometry of a segment, all Compositions that use this geometry will update their geometry.

1. Open the Plugin and click on Create Geometries: This will create an in-memory layer. In the next steps we will substitute the layer Compositions of the GPKG with the newly created in-memory layer.
2. Right-Click on the in-memory Layer and click on Make Permanent.
3. Choose Format GPKG, the file MyRegion_Network.gpkg and the Layer Composition. Be careful to name the layer "Compositions".
4. When you click on OK you will get asked about the desired overwriting behaviour. Choose Overwrite Layer.
5. You can now remove the old layer MyRegion_Network - Composition from the project by right clicking on it and Remove Layer.
6. Start the plugin after having made sure that configuration is correct.
7. In the Plugin configuration: Enable Allow geometry creation on the fly.

Remarks:

• If you want to manually update the geometry of the Compositions layer with Update Geometry, make sure the the layer Compositions is on editing.

3. SAC Route Network Editor

to be written

F: QGIS

Project Template

There is a template QGIS project available in the repository: TEMPLATE_routes_project.qgz

Don't open it directly ! This is a template.

Make simply a copy (all the QGIS project files are ignored by git) and open it. You could now make all the changes you want.

Style

You could find styles for the Segments and Compositions layers in Styles. There was made for the french network, so they used smoothing style.

G: Github

1. Intro

Git is a version control software system that is capable of managing versions of source code or data. It is often used to control source code or source data by participants who are developing the code or data collaboratively. Today, Git is the de facto standard version control system.

GitHub is is a proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share code resp. data. It is the world's largest source code host as of June 2023. Since 2018 its owned by Microsoft.

• An intro to the purpose and structure of Git: Video
• Installation and first commands: Video

2. Install a GIT client

Windows: Install Git

Accept all default values, except one: Override the default branch name... (see second video).

On Windows open the search box and type git. Now you can start Git CMD and a command prompt opens. Alternatively you open a normal command prompt and check, if the command git is available (it should). Alternatively you can also work with Git GUI.

3. Clone Repo

Open a Git prompt and change to the parent dir of project:

cd D:\Local\Github
git clone https://github.com/skitourenguru/Routes.git

Remark:

• The path D:\Local\Github is an example. Thats the place where you want all your repositories to be located (parent directory)

4. Register your id

Open a Git prompt

git config --global user.name myName
git config --global user.email myEmail@myEmail.com

5. Daily work

Suppose you work on a file, like ReadMe.md or Italy_Compositions.geojson. Just use normally whatever tool you are used to. At a certain moment you want to commit and push the changes to the Github-Server.

Open a Git prompt

// Make sure you are in the folder of your working dir
cd D:\Local\Github\Routes

// Make sure your local repository and the working dir are up-to-date
git pull

// First you commit: Changes are written to your local repository (a copy of the remote repository that is located on your computer)
git commit -m "Corrected the typo in the name of route with id=45" Italy/Italy_Compositions.geojson

// Second you push: Changes are written to the remote repository (on the Github-Server).
git push

Remarks:

• You can add also new files. Usually that won't be necessary.
• In this example we worked on the main branch. Its also possible to work with branches. For the purpose of the current repository that won't be necessary.
• A good field of excercise is ReadMe.md. You can change typos or improve the docu. The file is written with Markup-Down language. That's a very simple markup language that allows formatting documents. Use a Text-Editor like Notepad++ to edit ReadMe.md. Start with simple changes.

6. Useful GIT commands

// Change a file
git commit -m "Create France_Smoothed.sqlite" PublishFrance.bat
git push

// Stage and commit all changes in dir including sub dir
git commit -am "I made many changes"
git push

// Remove a file
git rm TopoMap_20230726.log
git commit -m "Deleted log files"
git push

// Add a new file
git add France-Alpes/France-Alpes-Foot-Manipulation.gpkg
git commit -m "Added a new file"
git push

// Check on which branch we are
git branch

// Check, if there is something to be pushed
git diff --stat origin/main

// Delete local changes in workspace and update
git stash push --include-untracked
git stash drop
git pull

// Get the GUID of the head
git rev-parse HEAD
git rev-parse --short HEAD

// See history
git --no-pager log -n 100 --pretty=format:"%h %ad %s" --date=iso

// List last 10 commit statements of a particular file
git log --pretty=oneline -10 src/locale/it.ts

// Configures the output such as all results are displayed
git config --global core.pager cat
git log --merges -n 20 --pretty=oneline
git log --merges -n 20 --pretty=format:"%cs: %s"
git log --merges -n 20 --pretty=format:"%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr) %C(bold blue)<%an>%Creset"
git log --merges -n 20 --pretty=format:"%cs: %s%b %n--------------------------------------------------------------"
git log --merges -n 20 --pretty=format:"%cs: %s --- %b"
git log --merges -n 20 --pretty=format:"%Cgreen%cs%Creset: %s --- %C(yellow)%b --- %C(red)%an"

// Checkout old version and go back to last version
git log -10
git checkout 3601638a0d558fe13e24c5a0abb37348ed7479f3
git checkout -

// Fetch a branch from the remote to the local repository
git fetch origin myBranch

// Fetch everything from the remote rep to the local rep
git fetch --all
git pull --all

// Display branch you are on
git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD

// Get a syntax problem list for the whohle project
npx eslint . --ext .js,.vue

H: Contact

If you want to notify an error or a remark about the routes data described in chapter B, contact us depending on the region:

1. France: randohiver@fondation-petzl.org
2. Switzerland: andreas.eisenhut@sac-cas.ch
3. Austria: AlpenvereinAktiv
4. Germany: AlpenvereinAktiv
5. Italy: Skitourenguru under about.
6. Slovenia: tbd

For all other questions, contact Skitourenguru under about.