Viewing obstacles along your route is a big focus here at Beeline. We want you to be fully informed about what you may encounter, and hills are certainly an obstacle worth being aware of and celebrating once you’ve crushed them! The new Climb View feature on Velo 2 devices will do exactly that - telling you of the total elevation you’ll cover on your route, as well as the details of each hill once you’ve begun that climb.
Enabling Climb View on your Velo 2 device
Update your Beeline app to 3.4.2295 or beyond for iOS and 4.2.5277 or beyond for Android
Once you’ve updated the app, tap on the request to update your device
Perform the device update. Your device should then be on firmware version 4.2.471.
Plan and start a ride! Your Velo 2 will report hills to you from here in the following ways:
Viewing hills on your Velo 2 device
Climb View Overview Screen
Once you have planned and started a ride within the Beeline app, there will be a screen on your device that will give you an overview of the elevation you’ll encounter throughout the ride:
This overview screen will show you the total elevation gain and loss throughout your ride, with a visualisation of the hills along with their difficulty. More information on the difficulty classification of hills can be found in the “Understanding Hill Difficulty” section below.
The top number on the overview screen will show you the total elevation you have climbed so far. The bottom number will show you the total elevation you’ll cover throughout the ride.
This screen can be accessed throughout the ride by using the top and bottom buttons to scroll through the device screens.
Climb View Individual Climb Screen
Once you are on a climb, you can view the individual climb screen by toggling to it with the top or bottom device buttons.
Here, you will be able to see the total elevation gain on the climb you’re currently on, as well as your progress along it.
You’ll notice some other helpful measures too. At the top, you can find the number of this climb out of the total climbs on your ride. Moving down the screen, you’ll see the distance left in the climb, as well as the elevation left to climb on that particular hill.
And once you’ve completed said hill?! It’s time for a celebration! Who doesn’t love a bit of confetti? We sure do :) Your Velo 2 will congratulate you as such upon the completion of each hill:
A bit of incentive to keep on climbing, we hope!
Viewing hills in the Beeline app
Hills are now also displayed within the Beeline app, allowing you to plan your rides effectively if you’d like to avoid or add some elevation gain along your route:
For even more information, whilst in the route planning phase, you can view the total elevation profile of your ride by using the “More info” option before hitting “Go” on your ride to see an expanded view of the elevation you’ll cover:
Understanding Hill Difficulty
To help you prepare for what's coming, your Velo 2 uses a clear visual system to indicate the difficulty of upcoming hills:
Yellow Bars: These indicate a climb that is starting to become challenging
Orange Bars: Expect a climb of moderate difficulty
Red Bars: Prepare for a very tough ascent!
Please know that this hill classification is based on Beeline's own system. It may differ from other providers as such.
Note: This is a separate scale from the traditional mountain bike rating system and is not related to the official S1-S5 scale used for mountain biking trails used by other providers.
Important Notes:
Please be aware that the hill difficulty and completion features are currently designed to work specifically within Beeline Smart Routed areas and will not be available in the following scenarios:
Recorded Rides: Hill difficulty and completion are not tracked for rides you record.
GPX Imports: Routes imported as GPX files will not display hill difficulty or trigger completion notifications.
Komoot Rides: Integration with Komoot routes does not currently support these hill climb features.
Mapbox Routes: Similar to GPX imports, routes generated using Mapbox outside of Smart Routed areas will not include hill difficulty information.
You can find the full list of Beeline Smart Routed locations here (spoiler alert, it’s most of the areas Beeliners roam!)
Data on elevation is provided by a mixture of open data sources. The difficulty scales are a metric we have created on our own. If you aren't seeing a hill you're climbing within this climb view, it likely isn't meeting the criteria of this metric to be counted.
This is the first version of this feature. There are a couple of additions we’d like to add in the future, including enabling these on the route types above and the ability for devices to switch to the hill climb screen automatically once the climb has begun. Please be patient with us whilst we keep making this feature better and better!
So, get out there and explore the hills within Beeline's Smart Routed areas to experience the full benefits of this exciting feature on your Velo 2!