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Seeing I got such great help with my editing question I thought I would push my luck. When mapping at the 10km per hex level what is the rule of thumb for assigning hills, mountains and alpine terrain within the TOAW community. I have been working with 300 meters (1000 feet) for hills and 1000 meters (3500 feet) for mountains. Alpine terrain I have no real idea.

The type terrain should not be determined by elevation alone, but by the actual change in elevation of terrain within the hex. Far too many map makers assume that high elevation means rough or mountainous terrain. Not true at all. Some of these have become engrained in wargames, like the "mountains" in Cyrenaica, Libya. There are no mountains in Libya, rather it is a high elevation plateau with an eroded escarpment facing the coastline. The area shown as mountains on all wargame maps are small hills with elevation changes of less than 100 meters. I live in Alaska and the Chugach mountains in my backyard are not particularly high in elevation (front range around 3-4000 feet summits) because they are close to the Pacific Ocean, but they are impassible mountains nonetheless. Furthermore, because of the latitude the actual alpine terrain starts around 3000' whereas in the Rockies or Alps, the treeline is around 10,000 feet. Much of western China is above 15,000 feet in elevation, but is desert, not alpine or tundra.

Bottom line is you have to use multiple sources to determine the terrain to put on a map - and don't use someone else's map as a guideline. Use Google Maps with the "terrain" function on to determine how "rough" an area is to determine whether hills, mountains, or whatever.

The German defensive line that ran from Melitopol to Tokmak was in some places only 40 meters above the plain and not more than about 80 meters. Yet it provided a significant advantage because it looked upon an almost flat plain to the east. In the southern part of Crimea there are 'mountains' along the coast of the Black Sea that exceed 1000 meters in some spots. Yet there are large relatively flat areas within these mountains at the high elevations. In the Andes there are 'mountains' whose elevations are 20000+ meters. Yet they are only hills because they sit on a plateau.

This thread may be of interest.

tm.asp?m=4642972

Cheers

Thanks Cathar.
I read through this thread and I can see I am using the correct foundation. Is everyone aware of the Perry-Castaneda Library's map collection? It has most of the maps mentioned in the thread all in the one location.
http://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/maps/

The Perry-Castaneda Library is an incredible resource for East Front design. The second best thing to come out of tu. The best being my wife.