Goal
The map is meant to communicate the feeling of a mountain place, not just the position of labels. The aim is a scene that reads as terrain, water, routes, and landmarks at a glance.
Relief treatment
The terrain uses a subtle 1.25x relief treatment, enough exaggeration to make shape and scale legible without tipping into fantasy terrain. A few levels were compared (1.0x, 1.25x, and 1.5x), and 1.25x kept the valley and surrounding peaks readable while still feeling grand.
Readability
The work is mostly about legibility over a busy scene: trails, roads, lift lines, and water need to read clearly, and place names have to stay in bounds instead of colliding with the terrain. The treatment is tuned for orientation (where am I, what is around me, how big is this) rather than decoration.
Honest to the place
The shapes follow the real geography rather than stylized artwork, so the map stays trustworthy: the valley, the peaks, and the routes match what is actually on the ground. The map appears both as an interactive scene and a simpler static version, so the same look carries over to lightweight pages and print layouts.