How to find which photo was taken at the highest point of a hike
You stopped for a photo on the way up, another near a ridge, one more somewhere close to the summit, and a couple more on the way back down. Looking through them afterward, it is not always obvious which one was actually taken highest — a viewpoint can look more dramatic than the true top, and the actual high point of a climb is sometimes a plain, unremarkable stretch of trail with nothing to mark it. Working out which photo really sits at the top of the elevation profile is a small, specific question, and answering it means looking at the numbers behind the photo, not just the photo itself.
The short answer
Every photo pinned to a hike sits at a specific point on the route, and that point carries an elevation value the same way every other point on the track does. Finding the highest one is a matter of comparing those elevation values across however many photos you took, not of judging the pictures by eye. The most direct way is to look at the elevation profile a replay draws underneath the route and see which photo pin lines up with its highest point. The more exact way, if you want a precise figure rather than a visual match, is to export the route and read the elevation logged at each photo's position straight from the file.
What a photo's elevation is actually built from
A photo taken during a hike is not measuring its own elevation independently of the walk. It is pinned to whatever point the route had reached the moment you pressed capture, and that point's elevation is the same figure the rest of the track uses — drawn from the phone's GPS and barometric readings, not from anything the camera itself works out. Two photos taken a minute apart while standing still at a viewpoint sit at essentially the same elevation for exactly that reason: neither one has its own separate reading, they are both just borrowing the elevation of the single point on the track where you happened to be standing.
"Highest point" is a different question from "elevation gain"
It is worth being precise about what you are actually looking for, because the two get mixed up easily. Elevation gain is a running total of every upward step along the whole route added together, climbs and re-climbs included, and it keeps growing even on a hike with several ups and downs. The highest point is a single elevation value — whichever point on the track sits above every other point — and a route with one long climb and no further bumps can have its highest point and its steepest stretch and its highest elevation gain all describe completely different parts of the same walk. A photo taken at the literal high point of a route is not necessarily the one taken during its hardest climbing, and it is not unusual for the true high point to be a fairly ordinary-looking stretch of trail rather than the dramatic overlook a few minutes before it.
Two ways to actually track it down
- Watch the replay and read the elevation profile. A replay draws the route across the map while an elevation profile runs underneath it, rising and falling as the line moves, and each photo pin appears the instant playback reaches the spot where it was taken. Scrub to wherever that profile peaks, and whichever pin sits closest to that moment is your answer — no separate export or spreadsheet needed, just watching where the highest point of the line lines up with a pin.
- Export the route and compare the numbers directly. A GPX or CSV export carries an elevation value for every recorded point, timestamped the same way the photo pins are, so matching each photo's capture time against the closest point in the file gives you an exact elevation to compare rather than a visual read of a graph. This is the more precise route when two photos were taken close enough together, elevation-wise, that eyeballing the profile leaves it genuinely unclear which one edges out the other.
Where TrailCam fits in
TrailCam pins every photo, video clip and voice note to the exact point on the route where you captured it, and shows the elevation profile running underneath the map while a saved hike replays, so scrubbing to the top of that profile is enough to see which capture sits there. For an exact figure rather than a visual match, a route can also be exported as GPX 1.1 or CSV, with the elevation of every point, photo included, sitting right there in the file. TrailCam is free to download; GPX 1.1 and CSV export are part of the optional TrailCam Pro upgrade.
Questions
- Is the photo taken at the highest point always the one at the most dramatic viewpoint?
- Not necessarily. A striking overlook can sit somewhat below the actual highest point of a route, which is sometimes a plain stretch of trail with nothing marking it, so the two are worth checking separately rather than assumed to be the same photo.
- Can two photos taken close together in elevation be told apart without exporting the route?
- Sometimes not reliably. If they were taken close enough that the elevation profile does not show a clear difference between them by eye, an export with an exact elevation value for each point is the more precise way to settle which one was actually higher.
- Does a video clip or a voice note carry an elevation the same way a photo does?
- Yes. Every kind of capture pins to a point on the track the same way, so it carries that point's elevation regardless of whether it is a photo, a video clip or a voice note.
Recording your own routes
TrailCam is an iPhone app that records your route with GPS, keeps video clips, photos and voice notes pinned to the spot where you took them, and exports the result as GPX 1.1 or CSV. It is free to download.