It is also nice to eliminate the fluff to know how far you have walked and the elevation gain and loss if not just to compensate for a week away from the gym or the bike (or if not just to feel good about yourself as you descend into middle-age). As I was lamenting the unneeded data in my traverse files, I remembered TopoFusion--an excellent program for editing the tracklogs to their essential parts. It also provides and nice profile analysis tool with an intuitive and flexible animation / visualization utility. I know that this type of feature has great potential for completing my map when integrated with notes, geotagged photos, and random recollections. Maybe I can boil it down into a useful post or two.

Once I trimmed the traverses to their relevant parts, I used TopoFusion to learn that I walked nearly 20 miles over the last 4 days and climbed and descended more than 10,000 ft. in all. Turns out that most field work on foot with a moderately heavy pack, occasional heart-racing encounters with snakes and cool outcrops, and a swim in the lake adds up to some decent exercise. More reasons to be a field geologist...and maybe part of the reason they / we seem to live so long...