Zwift’s Climb Portal opened at noon PST Friday, June 30th. Once it opened I went to work creating Strava segments for the new climbs and got most of them created within a few hours.
Now, just over three days later, I thought it would be fun to look at the segment stats for Zwift’s Climb Portal…
The Big Numbers
Here are some key summary numbers taken from the 8 France-based climb portal segments as of 1pm Monday, July 3:
- Total elevation gain: 7,868,828 meters
- Total distance ridden up climbs: 117,084 kilometers
- Average incline (elevation gain/total distance): 6.7%
- Total climb completions: 22,353
Elevation vs Climb Completions
Does the amount of climbing (elevation) affect how often a climb is done? Perhaps…
Cote de Pike is the expected outlier since it’s been the featured climb since the Portal launched. And the shortest climb in the Portal (Cote de Trebiac) is also quite popular.
But apart from those two climbs, there isn’t a clear trend showing that shorter climbs are more popular. It will be interesting to see how these numbers shake out in the coming months. My guess is that a climb’s popularity will have more to do with how Zwift surfaces it to Zwifters than anything else.
Total Meters, By Climb
Strava shows a total of 7.8 million meters climbed on the France Climb Portal segments so far. But which climbs account for which portions of that total?
Again, not surprising to see Cote de Pike with the largest percentage. Puy de Dome is a bit of a surprise with the second-most meters accumulated. As one of the longer climbs in the Portal, we wouldn’t expect it to be so much more popular than the other climbs. Does anyone have an explanation?
Hill Repeats
Climbers love their hill repeats, and it looks like many riders aren’t satisfied with just a single summit. Which climbs are riders repeating the most?
Col du Platzerwasel is the outlier here. Why so many more repeats than the other climbs? Perhaps one clue is that it has been completed less than any other climb. Our guess is that a handful of Platzerwasel fans (or bots) threw the numbers off a bit, and the numbers will event out more as time goes on.
Data Caveats
It’s important to add a few notes to this data:
- This is Strava, not Zwift: these numbers don’t account for all rides on Zwift. They only account for rides Zwifters have uploaded to Strava, and around 70% of Zwifters have their account hooked up to Strava.
- Climb completions, not climb attempts. The data in this post does not include activities where riders only climbed partway to the summit.
- Missing historic data: a small number of climb completions may not be included in this data, since I wasn’t able to make all 8 Strava segments as soon as the Climb Portal went live. Strava is a bit weird about reading in past attempts for newly-created virtual segments, so I can’t promise summits uploaded before the segment was created are included in my data.
- Only France: because Zwift maps your portal climbing to whatever world you start in (France or Watopia), we have to create two segments for each climb: one starting in Watopia, and one starting in France. The data in this post is only for the France segments, since we haven’t been able to create segments for all climbs in Watopia. (That said, Cote de Pike is the only climb that has been open in Watopia, and it has 6,696 attempts by 2,379 people as of the writing of this post!)
Strava Segments
Here are the 8 France segments used for the data in this post:
- Col des Aravis: strava.com/segments/34784290
- Col d’Aspin: strava.com/segments/34790445
- Col du Platzerwasel: strava.com/segments/34790472
- Col du Tourmalet: strava.com/segments/34784341
- Cote de Domancy: strava.com/segments/34784407
- Cote de Pike: strava.com/segments/34777359
- Cote de Trebiac: strava.com/segments/34783793
- Puy de Dome: strava.com/segments/34784506
Questions or Comments?
Share below!
Would be nice to see another similar article comparing Zwift’s “traditional” climbs (amongst themselves)! There should be years of data there! (Eventually you can compare non-portal climbs to portal climbs, but for that I would wait to have at least 6 months of data on the portal, IMHO…)
Hi Eric
Do you know if Climb Portal is a permanent options or is it only temporary during the ongoing TDF ?
Br
Henrik
Climb Portal is permanent! The featured climb(s) will rotate on a different schedule starting in August though.
ee another similar article comparing Zwift’s “traditional” climbs (amongst themselves)! There should be years of data there! (Eventually you can compare non-portal climbs to portal climbs, but for that I would wait to have at least 6 months of data on the portal, IMHO…)
We also added the climbs in the myCols.app, so you can also record your times there.
We now have over 50 climbs of the Zwift worlds in our app
Seeing that all the climbs in the portal are from the TdF and TdFF, do you know if there is any plan to incorpoate new climbs from another races. For example, from this year La Vuelta. Or maybe the fact that Rouvy is a sponsor of La Vuelta limit the options of seing climbs from Spain (Pike not included)
I’m sure other famous climbs will be incorporated. Just now sure which ones, or when.
Would love it if we could have Sa Colobra – enter the portal, descend to the bottom and then back up again just like irl.
If they’re going to keep adding famous climbs, we may see that one, it’s a popular KOM for the pros etc.
Would love to see Alp du Zwift in the portal too, so we don’t have to trudge through the jungle to get to it!
I did Col D’Aspin, but Strava didn’t pick up the ride as a segment FWIW
I just created the segment around… 11am PST. Your activity may show it now, or your may have to recompute stats for it to show up…
It’s coming up as a partial match – no dramas, I wasn’t gunning it so wouldn’t have troubled the scorers anyway
This is a screenshot of my ride, laid over the segment apparently by Strava… I can’t see any obvious differences, not on steering, and didn’t do any U-turns or anything else that might cause a discrepancy
as I say, I was doing a steady 200W so was only mid-table on the day, let alone overall, but thought this might be useful info
I’ve got the same issue. I refreshed the achievements in Strava but it still shows up as a partial match with no explanation.
Just check my Strava and the segment is there
It’s there for me too, it’s just that Strava doesn’t think I rode the full segment (thinks it is only a partial match to my ride).
But as above, I rode the full climb, round the loop at the top and back down again, all without breaks, drops in connection, no steering, so can’t work out why the segment and ride don’t match
Are there plans to fill in the graphics on these climbs? The shapes and colours just seem like lazy programming to me.
this guy clearly came in late
I’d love to see the biggest climb …. Mauna Kea! I expect it’s on the developers’ list, but I’m impatient so I’m flying to Hawai’i to ride it next month.
Scuba from the bottom, or are you taking the “easy” way out (can you tell I’m jealous)?
Why so many up Puy de Dome? It’s literally a freakin’ volcano!
“As one of the longer climbs in the Portal, we wouldn’t expect it to be so much more popular than the other climbs. Does anyone have an explanation?”
Those trying to earn their Concept Z1 bike? 🤷🏻
Puy de Dome – I actually rode Saint-Michel because it was a Saturday and knew I wouldn’t have enough time it during the week; that maybe an explanation.
Are meet ups available for portal climbs? And therefore, will the ‘bug’ ruin all KOMs?
Can’t do Meetups on the Climb Portal yet.
I believe the Meetup speed bug is fixed, so that shouldn’t be an issue at this point.
Any Everests yet?
We need Mt. Hehuan, let’s see if >3000m of climbing will be popular!
Puy de Dome: IRL you can not ride it… Even pro’s have never done it. Because the climb is closed and a protected area.
Maybe the cote de pike is most popular at this point as people like me didn’t know you could pick and that was the one you rode into from watopia… i thought they must just rotate weekly or something
I would like to see an Everesting climb with varying elevation but no downhill for the entire 8848m
It could also seamlessly loop at the top so you can keep climbing for infinity if you want.
Would be great to see it get some official recognition also.
I have done IRL Everest but I did a Base Camp with repeats of ADZ recently and thought it was a missed opportunity that Zwift didn’t reward me with a badge or any recognition.
i think people are farming XP right now. if you arent, you are missing out.
What do you mean “farming XP”?
the 250 XP’s are too easy to get here. you have 1 in 3 chance, and if you do the 2 short ones, you get 10 opportunities in less than 20 minutes. i got 8 on the Cote de pike; but im Lv60 anyway its no big deal to me
Interesting. As far as why Puy du Dome is popular . . . I rode it because it’s in the Tour on Sunday. I was tempted to ride the Tourmalet since it’s in the Tour on Thursday, but that’s a serious commitment. 😀
Has anyone noticed an unusual number of +250XP outcomes from the banners on the climb portal? Is Zwift coding a carrot in for Lv. 50 – 60 riders to make trying the new portal more attractive? After five days in airports, I finally made it home today to try the portal and I did enjoy it at least as much as the Alpe. I will definitely be back for this new feature.
Bots for repeats on climbs would be cool…
I completed the Puy de Dome in Watopia today. There is no segment for it shown in my achievements list, any idea why?
Yeah I was wondering about that… No Segment for me today either. Eric did state that he wasn’t able to create some Volcano climb segments, so maybe this is one of those. Also some people getting partial matches, haven’t checked on desktop to find out for my ride yet.
Strava is a bit weird about reading in past attempts for newly-created virtual segments
Nice way of saying that Strava is utterly broken regarding virtual segments.
And that’s on top of removing the segment functionality for everyone. Damn near criminal the giant mess they created, and seemingly aren’t ever going to attempt to fix. I guess what they have now is “good enough” in their eyes. Meanwhile, so much information and functionality is simply lost and never coming back.
I’ve only dabbled – halfway up the côte de trébiac on a recovery day. I’d been sceptical because I couldn’t imagine the graphics working as well as they do in Zwift worlds. In fact, I was really impressed and am looking forward to playing much more often in the autumn. The graphics are well done with sufficient variety to keep the eyes engaged, but the big deal for me is he detailed information on power, time etc for each segment. I’m always going to play on the shorter ones, but it was good to get the segment information that is… Read more »
Was excited about it. Done Dome, D’Aspin and Tourmalet. Probably won’t bother again. Doesn’t feel the same personal achievement to say AdZ or Ventoux because of the crap graphics. Pity. Love climbing, but the portal graphics make it a chore and a bore. I just cannot relate to the portal climbs and consider them an actual climb.
Do you know if you can do a meet-up for these climbs? Can’t find that option in Watopia/France.