Hello,
Is there any plan to add a future longer climb than what we have currently available on Zwift?
Mywhoosh for example has a 52km climb or something like that.
I take part in races that have 2h+ climbs and would be nice to have a climb that would take the average zwifter more than 2hours to climb.
So is this something doable in the future? A climb that has like 50+km’s?
Best regards,
Bruno
I believe the longest climb currently available is the Ven-Top route in France, it is 19km long. “Ven-Top” Route Details (France) | Zwift Insider
I don’t foresee Zwift adding any super long climbs like you describe as they aren’t very popular. Most all races on Zwift are on flat courses.
Not including the Zwift Academy races that will be utilizing the Ven-Top route (they are timed races for only 30 minutes so likely no one will make it to the top) there are only 4 races scheduled utilizing this route in the next 12 days.
Yeah i know that Ven-Top is currently the longest climb.
But for someone that needs to do 2h+ climbs that’s kind of short. That’s why i’m hoping they add a longer climb.
Mt. Fuji was in the rotation of the climb portal recently, that was 25km and likely your only option if it comes back around.
I was hoping for a permanent solution and not something that comes once and a while. 
If climbing is low gears, high resistance from the trainer then you might simulate that in zwift by creating a workout that had a 2hr erg mode at whatever wattage you climb at and putting your bike in a low gear so the trainer resistance is high.
The problem then is if you want to vary your wattage, but there are probably ways of doing that during the workout using the companion app. Another option, let something else control the resistance. e.g if you have a wahoo trainer their app lets you select a grade - the scenery could still be provided by zwift. It’s a bit of klunky workaround - and if mywhoosh has the feature why not just use that?
To some extent your legs really don’t know whether you’re climbing or not (unless you have bad gearing) and if people say “Nah because the resistance of the…” just think that zwift now has virtual gearing that adjusts the resistance of the trainer, showing that’s what gearing does. Most people feel that climbing is different because their gearing is too high and it’s the only time they put in any sustained effort. Wiggins wasn’t riding the hour record at 400+ watts thinking “Well at least this isn’t uphill”
Of course IRL climbing high is different because there’s less oxygen and your weight matters - but you can’t really simulate that - seal the room you’re in or something. Move to Peru.
It seems (from the climbing portal stuff) zwift do have tech to create a climb from real life GPS data, and rather than build all the trees and buildings to save spending venture capital they’re making it draw some fancy pants shapes and colours by the side of a space-age looking road and calling it a feature. That suggests they could plug in any IRL climb including whatever you’re climbing for 2hrs IRL.
Depends how much manual tweaking of the route afterwards they need to do but that sounds like it would be your friend, if you could just use your own ride data to create a climbing portal route you’d have what you want.
Zwift choosing what you can and can’t ride and when is a bug not a feature. It’s really arrogant of them too to decide you can only ride NYC, say, when they think it’s ok. Can you imagine if Steam had said you could only play team fortress 2 on Wednesdays? Can you imagine Gabe being a billionaire if he’d figured everyone should play what he thinks they should? Probably not.
The most obvious piece of software for zwift to have built is something that can take ride data or GPS and spit out a route that might not look like the real life route but is self consistent. Because, otherwise, the only way to generate routes involves burning through piles of venture capital - and it’s a slow, expensive manual process. Can you imagine minecraft being billionaires if they’d been building minecraft maps individually and slowly by hand? Probably not.
There are some reasons to have specific real life replicas, but the climbing portal thing shows that they realise it’s expensive and finally they might do the right thing™
The fundamental problem with zwift is, it was co-founded by a guy who believes he knows better than you what you should be doing. Especially in zwift. What your settings should be, how it should look, which route you should ride.
And until the other investors realise he’s wrong and sideline him you’re going to struggle to get changes that suit a niche need or that allow one user to create their own thing.
What would be good is to add this one:
I can already see the howls of protest coming shortly.
It’s not terribly steep, but it is long and high. I’ve ridden it before.
What might also suffice is a route starting from Bozel, going through the roundabout at Le Grande Carret, then all the way up through Saint Bon-Tarantaise, Le Praz (1300m), Courchevel 1550, Courchevel 1650, Courchevel 1850 and then up past the Altiport to the little cycleway Col de la Loze. The final part has 4 16% ramps and a fifth and final ramp at 18%. 
According to my records that’s the biggest I’ve done at 1872m elevation gain.
Unfortunately something like that would only happen as a portal climb and would probably not be particularly accurate to the real thing, in addition to being uninspiring.
This is where we need dedicated Zwift users who have knowledge of 3D animation, texturing and game development to come in and help develop these things. I used to do that stuff previously.
Having quality scenery helps to break up the length and difficulty of these enormous climbs, much more than some coloured path with shapes floating randomly through the air. For instance, with the climb to Col de la Loze through Courchevel, you could have planes landing and taking off from the Altiport, then the lake at the top.
I don’t get why it’s so difficult to create a fictional climb with 50km’s… is it really that hard to create an climbing route?
It’s not really that hard to do the road, but it’s the scenery that is difficult, unless you can use auto generation and some trickery to generate from satellite images as they do in the Flight Simulator world. Even auto generation needs some intervention so it doesn’t look too “robotic”.
In the Flight Sim world they are very good with auto generation these days (and in 2024 version even better) and it looks extremely realistic:
Yes, it’s really hard, unless you mean climb portal style graphics.
I recommend https://biketerra.com/ you can create a route from a GPX file and the graphics are nice, better than climb portal in my opinion.
I guess i need to take a look at that then.
Thx for the info
I see your point.
But still, adding some random trees, etc shouldn’t be that hard right?
One of the cornerstones of Zwift’s route design philosophy is that everything must be social. You must see lots of other riders in the game. If that condition is unlikely to be met, they won’t do it. It’s not that they can’t do it, it’s a policy intended to create a certain experience - one that you probably don’t care about (which is fine of course) but that’s their perspective on it.
Ok that makes sense.
Thank you for that explanation.
But yeah, for me the social aspect has 0 interest.
Guess i’m trying biketerra.
Sometimes Alpe du Zwift isn’t very social and there isn’t a traffic jam of riders all the time, so I hope that won’t get retired soon. 
Even the Constance group on “The Big Ring” yesterday wasn’t very social for that matter.
Also try PerfPRO Studio if you have a windows machine. That can import GPX files for routes so you can use your own rides or create courses on Strava them download them.
I have done that before when training to ride Col de la Madeleine and a few others.
If you have a few friends, they can join the ride if the bring their bikes and smart trainers to your location.
Check Rouvy, Fulgaz, and BigRingVR…I seem to recall seeing one of the long Hawaiian climbs in one of the apps.
Thx for the tip.
If you’re not interested in the scenery or social aspect then just setup a GPS like the Garmin Edge 530 to control your trainer and load in any course you want. The Garmin will simulate the resistance of that course.
That’s also a good idea. Thx.
