Been grumbling a lot on the Racing forums over my issues with Category Enforcement so only fair to come here and say I love the Climb Portal.
Did my first ride today and thoroughly enjoyed it - no complaints at all. Lead in on the France map is just long enough to get warmed up and hit the climb ready to go.
Looking forward to trying all the other climbs, and then re-riding them with holoreply as a challenge.
Well done Zwift team!
I presume the two that show as completed are the first two you did?
If so, I expect thatās because the challenge only asks for two climbs to be completed. Any others you did probably arenāt tracked as part of it.
With so many new climbs on offer, I have yet to have any on-route companions (someone to pace with or chase after). A few cheaters @ a steady 60 rpms and 5w/kg and no hrm have blown by me however.
Any chance you can add some Zwift pacerbots? indieVelo does a great job with such a feature, whether pacing, free-riding, training or racing.
Does anyone have the full list of Strava route/segments for these climbs?
It seems there are two segments for each climb.
They havenāt figured out how to merge Watopia and France.
So each world has its own KQOM.
First try with the climb portal this morning, and had a good time with it. A good way to get a climbing workout in, and Iām loving the more frequent 250 XP boosts. The graphics arenāt terribly engaging or distracting, but I agree that an improvement would be to somehow give a better sense of forward progress, especially in the steeper red sections. Otherwise it can visually feel like youāre pedaling through foggy, brightly colored mud.
Overall, itās not the best thing since sliced bread, but itās also not a horrible addition. Just another nice feature available that I can see myself occasionally returning to when I feel like some vertical pain.
Edit: I also agree with others that this feature would only benefit from keeping all the climbs available on demand rather than one climb on a two week rotation. When in the regular Zwifting world, I notice other riders in both directions fairly often, but I seemed to just focus on myself with the Climb Portal this morning and hardly saw much of anyone else. So Iām not sure Iād really care how populated a certain portal climb is.
@Eric_Schlange_ZwftIn manages the Strava segments for everything in Zwift
I love Climbing Portal. I have completed June challenge and planing on doing the whole 8 routes before the end of June. However, I have one request: could be possible to add segments distance on the left side chart like we have for Alpe Du Zwift?
well you do have 12 months to get them done ::
Hi there.
I did my first Climb Portal ride today, and I really liked it.
There is just one improvement I could think of. After Iāve crossed the portal I was welcomed by an instant incline of about 5-10% (it was Code de Pike climb). I was not prepared for this and I had trouble downshifting there. After watching Smart Home Trainers video I was expecting it to have a flat section before the climb starts. So I think thats a good idea - for ever climb add about 100m of flat road at beginning so we can prepare for incoming incline.
Finally got around to trying portal, attempting the relatively tame Col de Trebiacā¦
First time using 100% trainer difficulty on my H3 in months, so glad of the 26T granny ring on my hybridās triple chainset with 36T sprocket, some steep ramps!
Had to cycle ~1Km on exiting the portal to ācompleteā the route, so ~12Km total.
Quite like the coloured gradients.
Good challenge, will try again, going to be some time before I can complete most of them due to my daily exercise restrictions.
I wonder if in the future it might be possible to take live GPS data from pro riders and place them into the game, so we can ride against them live.
Or just watch them fly past!
I think it would be nice if there was something at the top of each climb like a photo of the climb or some information about the climb.
At the moment they donāt have any uniqueness and these are supposed to be iconic climbs, it would be good to give each one a bit of character somehow.
I tried Cote De Pike this morning . I used Miguel for a warmup and when he went by the portal entrance I hopped over (if there was a way to be able to teleport from a pace partner at the right moment would be awesome capability ). The graphics were a bit nauseating to put it mildly. I got dizzy . I think you have multiple folks with feedback on this. I did like the gradient on the road but it was the sky being essentially the same color that made it unpleasant . Even if you changed the color of that that would be huge . I wasnāt wild with the road and agree with others feels a bit like being in nyc on the overhead roads . I did like the segments and I liked the times etc .
When I finished I teleported back to Miguel and hung there for more zone 2. I really loved the idea of being able to construct a long workout like that was route based . That really kicked things up a notch .
So my feedback would be to be able to teleport to a climb directly from a pace partner so you can warm up before without having to save multiple rides .
I definitely would also suggest that if you could make companion have more functionality during the climb so I can see the road gradient changes I could cover my screen so I donāt look at it if thatās easier . I really liked the workout and having a climb that was hard available without having to go do some specific route .
Definitely has potential . Now Iāve set a challenge to myself to do all the climbs this month as Iām sure many others have ā¦ a nice new goal .
Thx Zwift
Iāve done a couple of these now, overall I quite like it but there are a few things Iād change.
Just rode Put de Dome and really enjoyed it. Companion app showed nothing at all on the map though. It would be good if the stars on the mini map had the segment number on them like the Alpe so you know where you are on the descent. Other than that really enjoyed it but I am training for a trip to the Alps. Graphics were fine . I had the difficulty equivalent to 100% for a compact and wasnt looking at the scenery.
I tested the Climb Portal yesterday. I really liked it, new climbs! People always wanted new climbs, now they get them and still complain about it. One thing that Iāve experienced was that on the Cote de Pike ist was sometimes difficult to erstimate whats coming next. If the background could get another look or color so that the track can be better differentiated it would be nice.
Iād like to thank Zwift for the effort and the new climbs.
Enjoying the Climb Portal - thanks Zwift team. But struggling with the lack of sense of speed, because thereās no surrounding foreground objects. I think placing automatically generated posts on the road side would help a lot.
Yeah, that seems silly. I donāt really see the point of having two different portals anyway. And if there do need to be two, Makuri Islands would seem a better bet. (OK, Tour de France tie-in, butā¦)
It seems to me, also, that if these are ādifferentā sets of fake GPS routes, weāre also going to end up with the Strava heatmaps looking really odd as 8 different climbs are overlaid on the same starting point.
I donāt particularly think Zwift need to bend over backwards to accommodate the oddities of Strava - indeed Iāve explicitly argued against it several times. But I think it would have made more sense for the Climb Portal(s) to initiate a GPS jump that a) separates all the climbs and b) combines identical climbs started from different portals.
āWho cares about how Strava looksā. Isnāt that what most people were saying? 
Yes, and thatās what Iād say too, as I indicated. =)
But I still think the implementation of different portals locating the same climbs on different co-ordinates doesnāt make sense.
