Let's say you're walking from SoMa to the Marina — something we'd never recommend, but hey, some of you are masochists — and you want to know what the least hilly route would be. Well, now there's HillMapper, an interactive site put together by a grad student in Berkeley's Urban Planning department, which shows you how to avoid the steepest slopes as you walk toward them.

Grad student Sam Maurer came up with the site, which uses a simple red/blue shading system to show you where your uphill climbs (red) are going to be, and where your downhill slopes (blue) will be, with darker lines indicating steeper slopes. The program makes guesses as to which direction you'll be hitting the street from based on your location, and it could be pretty handy, if it weren't for the issue of having to walk around with your phone or iPad in your hand while using it, begging to be stolen.

Anyway, go ahead and play with it. It's kind of cool.

[via ABC 7]