With the newly designed SAC hiking scale, the Swiss Alpine Club (SAC) wants to increase safety and reduce accidents. The evaluation criteria are now closer to reality in the field.
The Swiss Alpine Club (SAC) has revised the SAC hiking scale, also known as the SAC mountain and alpine hiking scale, to further improve safety in mountain and alpine hiking. According to a study by the bfu, around 50 people in Switzerland lose their lives in hiking or mountaineering accidents every year. Many of these tragedies could be avoided with thorough preparation considering the SAC walking scale.
Why and what changed?
The SAC hiking scale was originally introduced in 2002 and divides mountain hikes into six different levels of difficulty, from T1 (easiest level) to T6, where “T” stands for “trekking”. To make the scale more understandable and legible and achieve a better representation of reality on the ground, it has now undergone a reformulation. No changes were made to content that would be legally relevant.
The main adjustments
- The wording has been adjusted to improve comprehension and readability.
- Hiking trail categories (yellow, red, blue) are no longer clearly assigned to individual T-grades, but flow into each other, which better reflects the reality of the area. To emphasize this, this area has recently been highlighted graphically and in color.
- Short descriptions of T grades (hike, mountain hike, demanding mountain hike, etc.) have been removed, as such additional terms do not exist in other SAC difficulty scales either.
- Removed information about required equipment.
- The previous example rides have been replaced with new contemporary examples.
The definitions of the SAC walking scale. Table: SAC
This is how the wandering scale should be understood
- gradations: The symbols – and + can be used to further classify a route (e.g. T3, T3+, T4–, T4).
- Comparison with official trails: Most of the time, footpaths marked in yellow are found in zone T1/T2, mountain footpaths are marked in white-red-white in zone T2/T3 and alpine footpaths are marked in white-blue-white in zone Area T4/T5. In practice, however, there are often upward and downward deviations.
- indexes: Routes are evaluated under the assumption of favorable conditions, i.e. good weather and visibility, dry terrain, normal water level in streams, snow-free conditions, etc.
- Examples of tours: If no specific route is given, the normal route (easiest route) is considered.
- Footwear: The higher the difficulty, the worse the quality of the path and the more bumpy and unstable the terrain, the more stable are mountaineering boots with high shafts and torsion-resistant soles.
- Alpine technical aids: Basically, this scale refers to routes that are normally covered without a lifeline and where a lifeline is not possible/practical. At higher difficulty levels, you should also consider taking a piece of rope with you, including the necessary accessories (establishment of a rope handrail or fixation at individual points, greater freedom of action in case of auctions, setbacks or emergencies) – as long as you masters proper security techniques. Depending on the type of terrain (steep grass, hard snow fields), an ice ax (lightweight) or crampons can be of great use and contribute significantly to safety. The use of a helmet is also recommended on rocky terrain.
- glacier passes: The scale understands glacier passes as those that snow so much in summer under normal conditions that any crevasse can be clearly identified and safely avoided (which applies to many alpine hut trails). Under these conditions, there is no need for high altitude touring equipment. In unfavorable conditions, however, rope material, crampons and/or ice axes may be indicated or even mandatory.
- Alpine walks and climbing distinction: A big difference between demanding alpine hikes, easy high altitude walks and easy rock climbing is that on a T5/T6 route you can rarely be tied down with a rope, which is why the terrain must be absolutely mastered – which requires a requires a high level of technical skill and mental strength. Examples of this are very steep grassy slopes, craggy terrain without paths with poor rock or very exposed ridge passes. For this reason, alpine hiking in the upper difficulty range (T5/T6) is usually significantly more demanding than a simple L-rated (=easy) high-altitude hike or a safe second-degree climbing hike. Due to the different characteristics of alpine hikes and high walks, a direct comparison of rating scales can hardly be made, but in principle a T6 route can have comparable requirements to some high walks in the WS area (= not very difficult), in isolated cases up to ZS– (= quite difficult). difficult).
The revised SAC walking scale should approximate the reality of the field. Photo: Jöchli (Alpstein), Rolf Sägesser
Legal basis for mountain accidents
The Risk Activities Ordinance (RiskV) of the Federal Sports Office BASPO refers to the walking scale. It is important to note that the SAC Hiking Scale thus serves as a legal basis, especially for investigations and expertise in mountain accidents. As RiskV is not expected to be revised until between 2024 and 2025, both the old and revised errant scales will be available on the SAC website by then. PDF documents are dated to clearly indicate which is the old scale and which is the revised scale. The previous SAC walking scale will remain valid until the revised RiskV is introduced.
more on the subject will follow in the next issue #124
Source: Swiss Alpine Club SAC, Rolf Sägesser, summer flat ladder training