How do you calculate ascent and descent from max and min elevation?? (Biking)?

Question

How do you calculate ascent and descent from max and min elevation?? (Biking)?

Answer 1

This won't be an accurate measure because the max elevation will not account for changes in the elevation in the road during the climb.

Answer 2

To answer your question directly - subtract the minimum elevation from the maximum elevation.  That will give you total altitude change.  However, I suspect you are looking for actual total climbing and descending measurements.

There are two ways to arrive at this number.  Some mapping sites do provide GPX  data that can be converted to a database and sorted with IF/THEN formulae to get fairly accurate climbing data.  There is also a pretty decent algorithm floating around out there on the "intertubes" that automates the process from a formatted GPX file. I can't seem to locate it, but I remember that it was in the public do,main.