Like Rome! Built on hills! (and sacked by barbarians?)

[rmd.livejournal.com]

What are the steepest streets in Somerville?

I can't seem to find a convenient (free) topographic map of Somerville to answer my local geography trivia questions like this. Is there an online topo map of Somerville that will display in tiff or jpg or gif or something rather than some proprietary (or at least unreadable to my machine) format?

Comments

[balsamicdragon.livejournal.com]

The road up to Prospect Hill is pretty steep, and I believe Prospect Hill is the highest point in Somerville.

[ron_newman]

In October 2009 I designed and led a bicycle tour of all of Somerville's hills. Here's the map and here's the cue sheet, which includes altitudes.

Bikely.com also provides an elevation graph, but I can't give you a URL link because it's done with Javascript. Click on the map link then select "Elevation Profile" from the "Show" menu at far left.

According to the graph, Winter and Spring hills are both higher than Prospect, and Winter is a tad higher than Spring. Walnut Hill (aka College Hill) at Tufts is higher than all of the others, but its summit is in Medford.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

Oh, cool. Thanks!

ETA: oh, man, bikely.com is totally a great tool for this kind of thing.

[ron_newman]

I didn't even know about the 'punishing' ride that I linked to below, until I looked up Somerville just now at Bikely.

[balsamicdragon.livejournal.com]

Gasp! The Internets have _lied_ to me! :)

[ron_newman]

And here's another bike ride that someone else designed specifically to give people a punishing workout on Somerville hills: Map, Cue Sheet (with altitudes). On this one, it looks like Spring Hill is slightly higher than Winter Hill. I'm not actually sure which one is taller now.

This one doesn't cover all of the hills that mine does, but it is much more difficult because it repeatedly climbs and descends Spring Hill several times.

[emcicle.livejournal.com]

excellent. I will be training for a marathon (October) this summer, and it is a very very hilly course. I was trying to figure out the best hills around here to run. This will help substantially. I had just been running up and down the hill on Tufts' campus, but it will be nice to have some alternatives.

[ron_newman]

Glad to be of assistance! Which marathon are you running?

[emcicle.livejournal.com]

Mount Desert Island (starts in Bar Harbor, ME, and runs around/through Acadia). Should be beautiful. But a very challenging choice for my first marathon. :)