Zwift’s Climb Portal went live July 2023, and it’s included lots of new stuff worth talking about! New climbs. New look. New HUD features. And new world-spanning wizardry (more on that later).
Here’s a complete look at how the Climb Portal works…
The Basics
Zwift’s Climb Portal provides easy access to a rotating schedule of GPS-accurate virtual versions of famous real-life climbs. Its most noticeable quality is the “gamified” appearance of the roads, which are colored to match the gradient, with no surrounding real-life environmental visuals.
Why this design choice? Simple: it allows Zwift to quickly add new climbs to the game with no custom artwork required.
The Climb Portal Experience
Both Watopia and France have Climb Portals. These can be accessed from the routes menu of the Watopia or France maps, where you will find the day’s scheduled climb as an option.
You can also access the Climb Portals by navigating to them during your free ride in Watopia or France.
Watopia’s Climb Portal is reachable via the Volcano Circuit:
While France’s Climb Portal is reachable via a left-hand turn toward Mont Saint-Michel when traveling the main loop clockwise:
You’ll ride a short lead-in before going through the Climb Portal, which is labeled with your selected climb. Once you’re through the Portal, your climb begins!
Other riders are visible on the climb, and in an unexpected twist, you’ll see everyone who is currently on the climb, whether they entered it from France or Watopia. (It’s called a “portal”, after all!) If you have HoloReplay(s) enabled, they will also show up if you’ve already completed this climb in the past 90 days.
As you climb, the road changes color based on gradient. Floating text and geometric shapes help fill the air and give you a feeling of movement, while the 10 equidistant portal section arches give you a goal up the road to work toward.
Once you reach the top, a summary of your climb will show on screen as you ride the small ring road that loops you around to start your descent. Ride through the finishing arch and begin your descent, and the environment changes. While descending, the sky and road turn to cooler colors, encouraging you to spin those legs out as you enjoy the descent and the animated constellations above.
Ride through the Portal at the bottom of your descent and you’ll find yourself back in your starting world.
Customized HUD
Zwift has implemented Climb Portal-specific HUD elements which you’ll see as long as you’re climbing within the portal. These elements include:
- Portal Sections: the climb is divided into 10 equidistance sections, and your data (average HR, average power, and section time) is tracked for each. If you’ve already ridden that section before, your PR time will be displayed as you ride each section, so you can compete with your previous effort.
- Progress Meter: at the bottom-left, just below the Portal Sections box, sits this new element which displays an overall progress % meter for the climb, as well as how far you’ve ridden and how far you’ve climbed compared to the climb’s overall distance and elevation.
- Map: the right side of your screen is mostly taken up by a map element which includes a profile and overhead view. These views don’t display the entire climb – just the nearby portions.
- ETA: at the top-center you’ve got your distance remaining, climb remaining, ETA, and the name of the closest rider whose time you could possibly beat.
List of Climbs
The Climb Portal is a growing library of uphill challenges! See the full list of Portal climbs below (click a climb for details):
| Climb Title | Length | Elev | Gradient |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bealach na Bà | 9km | 632m | 7% |
| Col d’Aspin | 13.54km | 807m | 5.8% |
| Col de la Madone | 16.3km | 902m | 5.5% |
| Col des Aravis | 5.2km | 273m | 5.1% |
| Col du Platzerwasel | 7.82km | 592m | 7.3% |
| Col du Tourmalet | 17.2km | 1213m | 6.9% |
| Coll d'Ordino | 10.3km | 511m | 5% |
| Cote de Domancy | 2.97km | 240m | 7.9% |
| Cote de Pike | 2.17km | 215m | 9% |
| Cote de Trebiac | 4.6km | 207m | 4.2% |
| Crow Road | 7km | 251m | 3.58% |
| La Laguna Negra | 9.1km | 510m | 5.6% |
| La Super Planche des Belles Filles | 8.6km | 602m | 7% |
| Old La Honda | 5.6km | 395m | 7.1% |
| Old Willunga Hill | 4km | 252m | 6.3% |
| Puy de Dome | 12.96km | 913m | 7% |
| Rocacorba | 11.8km | 756m | 6.4% |
Climb Schedule
While the library contains many climbs, Zwifters can only ride the currently scheduled climb for the day. Zwift says they will rotate climbs every 2 weeks, with the same climb scheduled in both France and Watopia.
This seems like an odd schedule (why not rotate them every day, or perhaps every week?) but Zwift certainly have their reasons. Additionally, they’ll be listening to feedback and can modify the schedule whenever they’d like.
Powerups and XP Farming
While on a Portal climb, you are given one of three powerups as you ride through each of the 10 section arches on the way to the top:
- Feather
- Small Bonus (+10XP)
- Large Bonus (+250XP)
Looking to level up faster in Zwift? Short Portal climbs are the best way to do it currently in game. Read all about it >
Improvement Ideas
We wouldn’t be true Zwifters if we didn’t have at least three ideas how Zwift could improve a just-released feature. So here are nine:
- More useful maps: the climb profile and overhead views only show nearby portions of the climb. We’d like to be able to click and zoom out to see the full climb.
- Different background sounds: the ambient background sounds while climbing are… odd. Too somber, too heavy, for our taste. That said, we usually ride with sounds off, so this isn’t a big deal.
- Smarter Portal Sections: the “portal sections” seem programmatically generated, just breaking the climb into 10 equidistant sections. This makes adding new climbs easy, but it sure would feel a bit fancier if the sections broke the climb into logical sections at key turns or gradient changes.
- Achievements: there are no achievement badges for portal climbs at this time, which seems like a big miss. We’d love to see smart badges which count how many times you’ve finished each portal climb.
- Companion Leaderboards: we have Leaderboards in Companion now. These should include portal Climbs!
- Average Wattage fix: the climb report that pops up at the top includes an average wattage figure, but this figure seems to include your lead-in effort (before entering the portal). This needs to be fixed so you only see your average wattage for the climb portion.
Include the climb’s name in the activity title when saving my ride: Zwift already does this for other routes. They should do it for portal climbs!Done in version 1.44.- Enable Fan View and Teleporting: currently you can’t fan view or teleport to a rider who is on a Portal climb. That seems a bit silly.
- Better preview map/graphic from the homescreen. When you click the featured climb from the homescreen, the preview window doesn’t show the selected climb graphically in any way (not an overhead view or an elevation profile).
Final Details
We love that all riders will be visible on the same climb, whether they joined from Watopia or France. That’s a fresh sort of wizardry we haven’t seen before in Zwift.
It results in a bit of oddness, though, regarding Strava segments. If you start a portal climb from France, your Strava data will show you as climbing it attached to Zwift’s France map (which is based on the French island of New Caledonia for Strava GPS positioning). Start the same climb from Watopia and your Strava data will show you riding in Vanikoro, in the Solomon Islands (where Watopia is located for the purpose of Strava GPS positioning).
This means we’ll have to create two Strava segments for each climb: one for starting in Watopia, the other for starting in France. That means we’ll have a France leaderboard and a Watopia leaderboard for each climb.
Example: here’s a Strava segment for Côte de Pike in Watopia, and here’s the France version.
Want a Climb Portal video walkthrough? As always, our favorite Aussie Lama’s got you:
Got questions? Check out Zwift’s Climb Portal FAQ.
Your Thoughts
Tried Climb Portal yet? Share your thoughts below!
Another improvement idea: include the name of the climb in the default name when saving the ride. (Rather than Mont Saint Michel)
Yup, for sure!
I added your idea above, because it’s a simple and obvious win!
This is now being done, FYI.
Thanks for the informative post Eric. Any idea if it will be possible too see which climbs you have completed (diminutive how you can see which routes have been completed? Additionally will these new climbs be added to ZwiftHub?
Apologies… *similar too, not diminutive
No way that I can see at this time. I don’t plan on adding these to ZwiftHub… but we’ll see if that plan changes.
I agree with matt that it would be cool to add climbs to zwifthub for tracking. maybe similar to the badges where it is mainly just a list you can checkoff vs the more detailed routes
I agree, having somewhere in zwift that checks off the climbs completed would be FANTASTIC! The July challenge was fun but when it only checked off 1 route in each set, it was a bit confusing – did it not count my ride haha!
**Badges could be a great way to do this.** –> thanks for #4
Will it show our PR and Previous holoreplay thingies as well?
Yes. I should add that above somewhere!
this is sick.
Would be great if you could upload real life local rides into the portal.
I got on right when it opened. Rode the Cote de Pike and Cote de Trebiac. I really like the changing color of the roads for the difficulty. I like the color coded elevation chart (that would be great on AdZ). I didn’t think much about the graphics. I was too busy thinking about my gearing! I think this is a great way to get different types of climbs into Zwift. One item that can be improved is the descent, the roads turn purple and it is disorienting. You don’t know if the road is flat, uphill, downhill, steep or… Read more »
I don’t know if it was me but the XP on these are incredible. On one map I got 3 X 250 xp. It really gives me incentive to do more of these if thats what I can expect. Hopefully they do not nerf the XP on these banners.
sshhh, i got 8
I did hill repeats today. I logged 4000 XP for the activity. I only rode 69.5 km in my ride, so . . . About 130 km of extra XP from +10 and +250XP banner payouts. I HAVE to assume this is intentional to get those of us still between level 50 and 60 to have more of an interest in riding the portal than the Alpe. Am I riding more repeats on the portal for the rest of the month? YES! If they dial back the XP bias on the banners, I’ll go back to riding the Alpe.
Agree with prior posts. I did a portal ride this morning and really enjoyed it, but the descents are definitely disorienting.
And they definitely seem to have the odds of getting xp through each of the banners cranked up!
Even tho I’m level 60, I’d rather the XP than the 5 aero boosts in a row that I got on Cote de Pike. Completely useless.
I think this format would be ace for route based workouts.
Totally.
I rode Le Pike straight from the menu page and got an automatic signup for the Challenge or whatever is running for July. I did not really check for the climb name assuming it was Mont Saint Michel. Took going to Strava to determine which mountain it was.
Having completed the Trek ride this morning, I was free riding in France and tried the climbing portal. I took the correct turn but Zwift kept turning me around. I couldn’t enter the portal on a free ride?
I allso had that experience…maybe because it was after a group ride…and not a solo free ride…?
Something to do with apple tv – I don’t seem to be able to select any options for choosing a climb portal ride – it does not pop up with the new UI and route selection for it. I have checked for updates, as well as tried (and it has worked) on other devices such as a phone. Do you have a solution?
What version of the Zwift app do you have on ATV?
It is version 1.43.0 – I think this is the latest one.
I just tried on Apple TV.
I only have the option to do the Pre defined days climb. No way of selecting any climb from the challenge card.
Yeah, I’m seeing the same thing over here on ATV. Just reported it to Zwift via my internal channels… we’ll see what they say.
I have checked back now – the new UI is available to me on ATV and I can access all the climbs.
Which of the data (length, gradient, elevation gain) are actually correct? Whatsonzwift or Zwiftinsider?
My numbers above are from Zwift. I haven’t verified anything, and won’t until I’ve created the official Strava segments.
Some segments for ya: Col des Aravis (France Climb Portal): https://www.strava.com/segments/34784290 Col d’Aspin (France Climb Portal): https://www.strava.com/segments/34790445 Col du Platzerwasel (France Climb Portal): https://www.strava.com/segments/34790472 Col du Tourmalet (France Climb Portal): https://www.strava.com/segments/34784341 Cote de Domancy (France Climb Portal): https://www.strava.com/segments/34784407 Cote de Pike (France Climb Portal): https://www.strava.com/segments/34777359 Cote de Pike (Watopia Climb Portal): https://www.strava.com/segments/34777242 Cote de Trebiac (France Climb Portal): https://www.strava.com/segments/34783793 Puy de Dome (France Climb Portal): https://www.strava.com/segments/34784506 I’ll be creating segments for the descents too, as well as the Watopia versions of each climb once I’m able to access them. (Fun trivia: Strava apparently has reduced the number of segments I… Read more »
Do you know any more already?
The possibilities seem interesting. If Zwift can quickly whip up new additions, could we be seeing, for example, the final 30km of the Tour of Flanders temporarily added when that race is on? If it was only there for a week or two then I expect plenty of people would be on it.
Feels like they’ve just taken the clim data from velo viewer and then made it in Zwift. I won’t lie it’s pretty basic, I would go so far and say dreadful. There is nothing to make you want to enjoy the climb. Yes it’s easy for Zwift to introduce, but imagine going up the longer climbs on this. There is nothing visually pleasing to make you want to carry the climb. really disappointed in this one, was really looking forward to a quality addition. Some new roads and climbs to ride. But alas Zwift has gone super basic and ultimately… Read more »
I agree. This is pretty disappointing. I will use it like the structured workouts and enjoy it as much as possible, but it really just underscores that Zwift hasn’t added a real climb in three years.
I’m surprised at the amount of positive comments on this as I agree with you about it being dreadful, it’s a feature I’ve been looking forward to for a while to give some choice other than AdZ but after trying it a couple of times I don’t find it any good. I’d be as well having the Garmin drive the smart trainer for all the climbing portal does as it’s so featureless there’s no feeling of satisfaction or reward as you climb. In addition the fixed schedule just seems all the more irritating and would much rather they had done… Read more »
I’m susprise that everyone in the coments sems to be on borad an happy with this. I start with what I like, that you se de distance and elevtion you have ride from the begining of the KOM and the remaining. Not a fan of the Alpe style on the right side, nor the fact that you only see a small portion of the climb on the top right. I prefer tosee it all, and have and idea of how much is left. The visuals are awful, the fact that the color of the screen chanes with the gradient, for… Read more »
I would tend to agree, this is something I can’t seem to get too excited about. At first it felt a bit novel and a bit ‘mario-kart’, but couldn’t spend more than 15 mins on it I think. It might be more enjoyable if you could take part in races up the climbs, but not sure that is possible yet.
I want to make a strong suggestion to Zwift that they provide more than one mountain every two weeks from August. That’s like giving a baby candy in July and then stealing it away from them. Ludicrous decision by Zwift! It will also mean for two weeks we are stuck with something we might not want to climb (as someone training for a week in the alps in Sep I have no interest in a [email protected]% climb but I understand others will. Then the reverse will happen if it is 16.9@Douglas Boivin.8%). There should be two different mountains (and each… Read more »
That’s interesting what the website did to my @ and % amount after posting it 🙂
Just did the 4 short ones! It’s a great training! I don’t need trees or a yeti! The average watt would be nice.. but meh / it’s a great feature
I’ve being riding on Zwift for one year. I like climbing, (finaly got Tron bike month ago). Climbing today on portal was worst visual experience i had on the platform.
Imho total failure.
I hope Zwift continue to develop new visual appealing roads and not this nightmare from 1980 videogames.
Are we able to schedule a meet up in watopia and ride one of the climbs?
Not yet. Would be a nice option for them to add!
I like that the only power ups are small XP, big XP or feather. Helpful!
You are lucky, I kept aero on the way up Tourmalet
Another improvement idea: stop giving aero boosts at the intermediary arches. I did Cote de Pike this morning and got the aero powerup for the last 5 arches!
I just finished the Mount-Saint Michel Cote de Pike climb. Very impressed. I like it. Keep them coming!
*Mont-Saint Michel… (autocorrect!)
Gave today’s TdF stage, Cote de Pike, and one I’ve ridden for real, the Col d’Aspin, a go and loved it. I can’t say I miss the scenery when making an effort up a climb. One plea to the people at Zwift – PLEASE let us always select a climb from a list not lock 90% off and enforce a climb of the day post the TdF 🙏
I really don’t mind that each climb is less populated as a result there’s always your own effort or even holo replay to go up against.
Agree! Cote de Pike looks and feels ideal for repeats, at least for me.
Love it. Tried the Puy de Dome and Cote de Pike and this will make training and climbing a lot easier and a lot less boring than the same Alpe every time.
The road being the color of the gradient is great
Dont miss the trees, skies and animals
The 10 segments with their heartrate and watts average is great.
ETA, elevation left, time left data is very handy
The map with the road section are very nice.
@Eric Schlange
There are two Strava segments for the Pike Climb?
There’s one from France and one from Watopia.
Yea, two segments.
Well, I rode one climb today and it was much better then expected, I am waiting now for tourmalet stage in tdf to ride this climb, I will just start hour before pros to finish more or less the same time 😀 Although there is nothing to look like, changing of the gradient and other visuals are quite engaging and it is much easier to climb knowing exactly when gradient will go over 10. The only thing about gradient colours is that the scale could be better – I think above 9/10 change in colour is very subtle, but other… Read more »
Creating a meetup ride/workout on the portal….
I’ve done one climb of first ascent challenge stage 2 yesterday with a technical error of time count in the first portal, so I did one of stage one today without technical errors and still it gives me a 0% complete. What is going on?
When doing climbs from challenge I have access to 4 of them only, is that correct, or sh
The descent on the climb portals are often GREAT opportunities to gain the achievement badges for attaining a maximum speed. I managed to bag the elusive 100km/hr badge on the descent from Cote de Pike.
Given it’s a portal, wouldn’t it be possible for the GPS co-ords to match the real life location of each climb? That way there would be no need to double up on segments for Watopia and France, and the underlying maps on Strava would make some sense. I know it may be a little more complex to program but shouldn’t be that tricky!
Would mess up the segment times from the real world, really bad.
Zwift segments are a completely different sport on Strava: they are virtual ride segments. Only activities that are virtual rides can match virtual ride segments and virtual ride activities only match virtual ride segments. There are already zwift worlds whose gps coords match the real life location, Richmond and New York and parts of London for example.
I did the Col d’Aspin today and really enjoyed the climbing portal, ideal for me. I listen to music has I train and mainly watch the profile and climb percentage so didn’t miss the scenery.
Do we know how may XP are earned for each of the climbs?
No completion XP, so just your standard by distance, and any you get by going through each banner
My husband and I have been riding the Portal. Selecting our climb from the main menu and saving after completion. I have completed 3 of the climbs and he has done 5. Yet on the menu when we go to chose another climb it only indicates that our first 2 climbs as completed. Is this because you only have to do one from each Stage to com8the Mission???
Will the Strava segments be added to Veloviewer leaderboards? I guess you would have to do every climb twice. Once from Watopia and Once from France?
Another point of confusion. The Zwift climbing challenge only requires two climbs to be completed. One from group a and one from group b It will only show these two as completed. I repeated climbs as I did not understand why subsequent climbs weren’t showing as completed.
Can we do workouts there?
To get the highest XP. Take the shortest distance as possible. Do not use workouts. every passing equal distance rings use power ups. some of not. but there are three power ups come out. +250xp, +10xp and feather. I thinks % are 30% 40% 30% each. I did 5 turn arounds 2.2km climb. at that time I got lowest 2times of +250 and higest times of 250x during a climb. Incredible,be samary but not easy !!! Also use coffee coupon some one passes you very fast. LOL
Sorry, jet blast, I’m interested in getting the most XP possible, but I’m having a bit of trouble understanding your post. I did the Cote de Pike from Watopia a few days ago, and I noticed a +250 XP as I went through one of the arches. Did you do a u-turn within the climb, and go back through the arches a second time order to get that +250 again?
Well how to put it ?! … New content is always nice it gives the user the impression of the game is beeing developed and the the provider cares about the community. – But wait , what’s zwift ? It’s a colorful world with a creative comical approach to reality, so we ride through volcanos, bypass dinosaurs or ride on transparent roads between NY skyscrapers. Every now then troughout the year we get events like TdZ with badges to earn on event courses, which makes them kind of exclusive, to give it more ‘value’ than every day group rides. –… Read more »
In general I do not mind the abstract graphics. I’m not a climber so I can’t pay all that much attention to anything but the gradient, and TBH the road-color shifts are all I need for that. However, when a large geometric floaty-circle happens to intersect the road just right, it looks like a segment arch, which is confusing if you’re hanging on to a powerup for the right time to use it. I figured out that the *real* arches have vertical lights stretching up from them, but when you’re close up to them, the difference isn’t obvious, especially when… Read more »
I love Zwift but this portal has the feeling of an early mock up that is waiting to be built out. Stripping back climbs for the sake of speed of execution has resulted in a soulless experience. I went up Col de Pike and at times couldn’t sense I was moving, other than the numbers were changing. The inclines all felt odd and I lost interest in the climb very early on. There are plenty of good climbs on Zwift so I can’t imagine coming back to this. I not sure this can be classified as ‘gamifying’, no gamer would… Read more »
I have spent 1500 happy hours Zwifting. Going through the portal for me was like entering a time portal to the pre Zwift era when indoor training meant using a a dumb trainer staring at a basement wall. To me, the graphics and overall experience of the climb portal are disorienting and almost frightening. Like having a bad acid trip in Watopia. One trip through the portal was enough for me. I was ecstatic to return to the happy “real” Zwift world, like Dorothy returning to Kansas.
Will the portal schedule be “hackable”, like the guest world schedule?
Given that it is a “portal” why don’t they just make the world location match the real world, like they have for the Richmond and Innsbruck worlds, for example, so there is only one strava segment per climb? Also, I this the graphics are for Zwift’s convenience only. I Zwift because it distracts me from being indoors. Each climb is fine as a novelty, but if I was going to ride the same one several times I’d resent the lack of scenery to look at. Please just add precedurally generated trees, etc. I don’t need realism, just something that changes… Read more »
Because in terms of a map/Strava, you’re entering from one of 2 diff locations
Tried it today, and it was good! Would it have been better with a fully immersive world? Probably. Would I like the whole Zwift universe to look like that? No. But I don’t mind a small part looking like that, and if it ends up being something like RGTs Magic Roads for example, I don’t mind at all. it achieved what it was supposed to: provided a climb that you could still see what was coming up and visually represented changes in gradients well. I will keep using it, more so than the Alp TBH as you don’t have to… Read more »
I’m not a fan of the graphics on these climbs but 100% agree that a portal to popular zwift world climbs would be good. For AdZ I use jungle circuit route and peel off at the junction (as I think most do) so much less than Road to Sky “official” route, but still a pain to get to the climb when you simply want to get started.
I’ve found 2 issues with the portal:
Can these issues be fixed? 🤔
I guess as the same climb is accessible from 2 portals, when mapping over Strava it doesn’t teleport you to the real world coordinates, it just adds the route onto the map wherever you take it from. So far mine have only shown where I’ve ridden in ‘France@, and guess the Watopia access would show the route on that map – might explain why you have different stats? @Eric Schlange ?
Sorry, and a third issue: the power reading on the congrats screen when you reach the top is wrong. Mine said 231w and on Strava I was 260w, which was much more correct given my interim power results at each check point.
That’s a known bug – listed above in the post.
AAAARRRRGGGGHHH….!!!!!
Having suffered up the Col d’Aspin last night, it now does not show as having been completed.
My Monday trek up the Cote de Trebiac registers, but nothing for the CdA.
Has anyone had this issue?
Yes, same for me today 🤔sucks!
That’s a Zwift UI issue, with the “First Ascent” challenge thing. It’s only showing the completed badge on the first climb you finish for each stage. Basically, there’s no where in game currently accurately showing climbs you’ve completed. I’m sure Zwift will fix it, as it’s a big miss currently!
How do we know which climbs we’ve done? I KNOW I did Aspin and de Dome but I’ve done three of the others but I don’t know which ones. Hard to even tell them apart when you ride them again.
You don’t. Basically, there’s no where in game currently accurately showing climbs you’ve completed. I’m sure Zwift will fix it, as it’s a big miss!
Umm, the one that took you 3-4x as long is Aspin.
(That’s for Pike, sorry — Puy is pretty distinctive, though!)
is there any chance to get to see the section data from a climb later. Just for tracking progress on that particular climb
Strava? Create a segment?