• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
• /
• v.29 no.4
• /
• pp.626-635
• /
• 2015

Recently, the number of trail users in Korea has risen tremendously. Consequently, the cost of safety measures related to hiking is sharply increasing. Despite the safety cost input, the number of heart-related adverse events has been not decreasing. Therefore, this research aims to suggest the use of objective and quantitative trail use information in terms of course difficulty. The study site is Jirisan Dullegil (Jirisan Forest Trail). The currently available trail difficulty information either provides the difficulty rating in terms of 3 to 5 levels according to several empirical difficulty factors reported by staff who maintain the forest or simply states the distance of each trail. Thus, many trail visitors feel a great gap between the given information and actual difficulties they experience. In this study, we tried to assess the degree of difficulty by actual energy consumption. Calculating the volumetric oxygen consumption (VOC) by the distance and gradient not only makes possible an absolute rating but a comparison among the trails as well. Also, it is highly effective to simply describe the exercise intensity of a certain trail. Further, it is easy to check the VOCs' changes by switching the start-end points of the same trail. Providing the trail information of VOCs by sections and directions, we expect to prevent heart-related accidents.