Zwift’s fresh southern coast expansion on Watopia added 19km of beautiful rolling roads along the ocean, opening up lots of possibilities for longer Watopia routes.
Today we introduce the next southern coast-inspired Rebel Route: The Roads Less Traveled! Zwifter Shawn McAfee sent in the initial idea for this route, but we tweaked it just a bit so it includes all four of the rarely-traveled road sections Zwift added back in December 2020. In fact, this route covers three of those four roads in a direction no official Zwift route covers. That’s pretty cool!
About Rebel Routes
“Rebel Routes” are Zwift rides not available on Zwift’s routes list, thus requiring manual navigation.
The reward for your rebel ride? Exploring a new route, knowing you’ve gone where few Zwifters have gone before. And a Strava segment rank in the tens or hundreds instead of the thousands! Rebel Routes are also included as a separate category on our Veloviewer Route Hunter leaderboard.
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Route Description
We begin by selecting Sugar Cookie as our route, which spawns us near the Jungle pens and routes us correctly for the first ~26km of the ride.
Ride down the Jungle Circuit’s dirt road in the forward direction and go through the Jungle lap arch. This is the start/finish line for our route.
Next you’ll turn right onto the new southern coast road. You’ll hit the Stoneway Sprint, Acropolis Sprint, Sasquatch Sprint, and Woodland Sprint before climbing away from the coast and back into Saddle Springs where you’ll head up the short climb and take a right into Titans Grove.
Enjoy the Titans Grove rollercoaster, wave hello to the dinosaurs and put in a good dig on the Titans Grove KOM before descending the rollercoaster and heading out of the grove, turning left toward Watopia.
You’ll hit Ocean Boulevard next. Turn right here toward downtown Watopia, then a quick left to go up the Hilly KOM. You won’t actually climb the whole KOM though, because you’ll turn right halfway up onto the KOM Bypass. This is the first of our “roads less traveled” for which this route is named.
Turn right after the bypass to descend through the statues and past Hank’s Gas Station, then turn right after the 360 bridge onto another road rarely used. This little spur spits us out at the JWB Sprint banner – turn left here, ride through the Italian Villas then take a right to wind your way down to the Fishing Village.
Stay on the main road through the village and down into the ocean tube, then turn right at Sequoia Circle to head toward the Epic KOM. You’ll climb the foot of the Epic KOM and go over the suspension bridge, but then you get to skip the rest by turning right onto the “less traveled” Epic KOM Bypass road.
At the end of the bypass stay straight to head toward the Jungle. Ride past the Jungle pens where you ride began, descend to the dirt road, but this time turn left onto the Jungle Circuit’s reverse direction. Cross the suspension bridge, descend through the dust, then turn right onto the Mayan Bridge cutoff – the last of our four “roads less traveled”.
Cross the bridge, climb up and out, then turn left. Almost there! Just keep going downhill, enjoy the beautiful cave colors, then cross the Jungle arch for a second time. You did it!
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Profile
This profile is best described as “rolling” in character. The longest climbs are the Titans Grove KOM and the foot of the Epic KOM, but neither of these is more than a few minutes of effort.
Getting Started + Lead-In
The easiest way to get started is to choose “Sugar Cookie” from your Watopia route options. This will auto-navigate you all the way to the turnoff for Titans Grove, where you’ll need to turn right.
Turn by Turn
Here are the turns you’ll need to make to successfully complete The Roads Less Traveled after starting from the Sugar Cookie route:
- Right to Jungle/Alpe
- Straight (Right) to Mayan Loop
- Straight (Left) to Jungle Loop
- Right to Southern Coast
- Left to Epic KOM
- Straight (Right) to Epic KOM
- Right to Titans Grove
- Left to Ocean Blvd
- Right to Downtown
- Left to KOM
- Right to KOM Bypass
- Right to Bridge
- Right to Italian Villas/Sprint
- Left to Italian Villas/Sprint
- Straight (Left) to 360 Bridge
- Right to Sequoia Circle
- Straight (Left) to Sequoia Circle
- Right to Epic KOM
- Straight (Right) to Epic KOM
- Right to Epic KOM Bypass
- Straight to Jungle/Alpes
- Left to Jungle Reverse
- Right to Mayan Bridge
- Left to Mayan Loop
- Straight (Left) to Jungle Loop
Route details:
Distance: 53.6km (33.3 miles)
Lead-In: 5.7km (3.5 miles)
Elevation Gain: 437m (1433′)
Strava Segment
Rebel Route Suggestions
Got an idea for a great Rebel Route? Share it below and maybe we’ll publish a post about it!
“You’ll climb the foot of the Epic KOM and go over the suspension bridge, but then you get to skip the rest by turning right onto the “less traveled” Epic KOM Bypass road, in a direction no official Zwift route uses.”
I think you will find Sugar Cookie goes along that route in that direction. 😀
Fixed. Thought I had corrected that already, but… here we are! 🙂
The Epic KQOM bypass is used in the same direction in Sugar Cookie route, so there actually is an official route using this direction.
Are you sure about “turning right onto the “less traveled” Epic KOM Bypass road, in a direction no official Zwift route uses” ? That’s the same direction Sugar Cookie goes, so an odd statement after Sugar Cookie is the start of this route. Still, good rebel route idea.
Three comments saying the same thing!
Classic…
Any chance Zwift will one day allow users to create custom routes and save them to a personal library? These rebel routes would be great if we didn’t have to manually select the turns. This would make group rebel rides much easier.
Don’t be stupid. They only take £1million a month in subscriptions
Thanks for the route, was perfect for a sweet spot workout this evening!
Rode it today. Nice. My next variation will be to include Eric KOM Reverse in the loop.
I had “Hot and Humid” idea on my long ride few weeks back. Start from jungle pen, then go to jungle banner to start the lap, ride the coast, tempus downtown, do the volcano KOM and go back to jungle trough tempus and coast. turn right to start the jungle climb and take the bridge shortcut to other side of jungle and ride to the banner to complete the lap.
These rebel routes are really cool, thanks for sharing this one. An idea for future rebel routes that may have been brought up long ago: include the km/mile where each turn takes place so we know how long until the next turn, and it allows us to easily see where we’re at in the list of turns.
P.S. Shoutout to Shawn! A local legend for organizing IRL racing and quite the Zwiftaholic.
The mileage at each turn would be helpful. Thank you.
I got lost. I was on “the Esses” and thought I made a wrong turn (I didn’t). I completed the 33 mile ride in just 41 miles!
This is why adding the distance at each turn would be really helpful!
Hi. Will these be added to veloviewer
thanks
Should be added this week!
Hello. It’s no secret that the most popular place for Everesting is AdZ.
I suppose it would be great to have a special official segment “AdZ vEveresting” in Strava. You can include it in the Rebel Routes list. Or separately.
Why:
1. Achievement. There are no badges, marks or achievements for Everesting in Strava. Finally he will be.
2. Time. You will be able to view the exact time of Everesting in automatic mode. Without calculating manually, excluding the lead in, the last descent or the continuation of the ascent.
3. Statistics. You will be able to compare or improve your time, as well as compete with other racers and friends. And quickly find out who else was able to do it.
4. Motivation for a new challenge. Maybe someone will do it again according to the rules of the Strava segment 🙂
5. Development of the idea. In the future, you can make new Everesting segments in Strava with other mountains. For example, VenTop and Epic Kom. Going through different segments and leaving a mark on history is motivation for new challenges.
I can suggest rules and describe possible problems.
1. Starting point: turn to AdZ
2. U-turn at the top: immediately after the arch.
3. U-turn at the bottom. This is the main problem. Depending on the bike, the rider and the strength on the descent, this point may change. And if you leave the computer, the avatar may roll out further than necessary, and as I understand it, the segment will not count. I checked several descents, and no one left until the dirt road. You can make a U-turn point at the end of the asphalt. On the edge with gravel.
4. The finish point. It can be made a little further than the Everesting icon in Zwift, closer to turn 9. Excluding the climb to the LEAD-IN and counting only the ascents of the mountain. According to the rules everesting.cc I note that the segment will also be counted for those who want to finish climbing 9 or who want to do 10K or double/triple everesting. That would be fair.
We were looking at a recovery ride route on the Makuri Island roads. This route has two figure eights 14.3km in length with 115m elevation gain.
Start by selecting Wandering Flats as your route. Turn right when entering the Village Onsen and left back down the center of V Onsen. Next a right to get the South V Onsen segment. Right to get a second pass down the center of V Onsen. Follow this road up towards the Castle. We make a right to go through the reverse of the Castle KOM follow this down below the village and a quick left back up to village past Godzilla’s hand. Straight through the village to roll through the Village Sprint and a right to pass the village markets. A right to take riders a second time through the center of Village and Sprint banner again. Left and follow the road down to the Wandering Flats banner to complete the route.
Neko’s Playground