Not only people living in mountainous regions want to know the summarized positive and negative difference of altitude along a track (“line”). With QGIS 3.10 the new processing algorithm “climb along line” does the job for you.

What will be processed ?

A copy of the input vector layer with additional attributes for each feature (the total climb, total descent, the minimum elevation and the maximum elevation).

The starting position…

A line geometry with z values (e.g. altitude) – e.g. generated with a DEM and the Drape-algorithm.

The result…

A new vector layer with the mentioned attributes in the table for each geometry 🙂

Sometimes the small new features are more than helpful 🙂