Establishing steepness of a hill-anything online?

[night cycler]

Is there anything? I suppose it is not so easy to establish. There are two aspects to consider-the length of the hill and the steepness. Then to complicate the topic further, some steep hills level out before another steep section. How are hills rated/assessed by cyclists?

 

[HobbesOnTour]

Is there anything? I suppose it is not so easy to establish. There are two aspects to consider-the length of the hill and the steepness. Then to complicate the topic further, some steep hills level out before another steep section. How are hills rated/assessed by cyclists?

It's not particularly clear to me what you are looking for.

A quick google of bike climbing categories throws up lots of info.

Osmand has a very useful display that breaks a route down into distance and gradient so that we can see, for example, 5km < 4%, 3km between 4 &8% etc. (Of course that is the cumulative total over the route).
Cycle.Travel has an easy to read gradient profile, more accurate on shorter routes.

Two different gps devices on the same route can record different gradients and meters climbed.

It can be a confusing area to nail every last meter down and any gradient profile or prediction of climb is an estimation based on a variety of different factors and frequency of measurement. The same route on two different route planners can have significant variations in climbing.

 

[a.twiddler]

What it boils down to in the end is that you have to ride them to know them. You might find a route that looks hard on the planner but is ok in practice. The same hill at the end of your route is probably going to feel more difficult than at the beginning, when you are fresh. You can fill yourself with apprehension by watching videos of other peoples' experiences of such as Gospel Pass or even Hardknott but in the end, you will come to know what you can manage, and can judge things by your own experience. Not everyone is a "King of the Mountain" but most people can find a way up the worst of hills, even if they need to stop for a breather or several on the way up and do it at their own pace. It helps if the hill has some less steep pitches on the way up, of course.

 

[presta]

It depends what you want, if you just want the mean gradient, it's easy enough to measure the distance and height difference off a map.
If you want the height gain and gradient profile throughout the climb Plotaroute will show you that:

If you want to measure gradient at any point on a road, I have one of these clinometers. I got mine from Roseversand, but they stopped trading with the UK after Brexit.

Clinometers are interesting, I discovered that numerous roads which previously seemed inexplicably hard work are actually uphill when they look like they're flat or downhill.

 

[derrick]

Is there anything? I suppose it is not so easy to establish. There are two aspects to consider-the length of the hill and the steepness. Then to complicate the topic further, some steep hills level out before another steep section. How are hills rated/assessed by cyclists?

There just another bit of the road.

 

[PaulSB]

Is there anything? I suppose it is not so easy to establish. There are two aspects to consider-the length of the hill and the steepness. Then to complicate the topic further, some steep hills level out before another steep section. How are hills rated/assessed by cyclists?

One thing I never want to know about a hill is length and steepness. If you feel you do need to just Google the climb name and it's almost certain to be in the first few results.

 

[Regular.Cyclist]

If you know the name of the hill / climb you have always look for it in your preferred search engine followed by 'veloviewer'.

e.g searching for Box Hill veloviewer gave me this link https://veloviewer.com/segments/3623111 and Sheephouse Lane veloviewer this one https://veloviewer.com/segment/696403/Sheep+House+Ln+Climb.

 

[Jameshow]

You can get most well known climbs listed on this website / book.

https://cyclinguphill.com/100-climbs/

Some aren't as hard as you might expect like Holme moss!

 

[ColinJ]

One thing I never want to know about a hill is length and steepness.

Only a person who is good at going up hills would ever say that!

If on a suitably low-geared bike I would want to know the length to the nearest hundred metres if it is between 10% and 15% and probably to the nearest 10 metres if steeper than that. (So I can work out how hard it would be.)

If on my singlespeed bike, I would want to know lengths to sub-10 metres and gradients to within 1%. (So I could work out if I could actually ride up the damn thing.)

 

[PaulSB]

Only a person who is good at going up hills would ever say that!

If on a suitably low-geared bike I would want to know the length to the nearest hundred metres if it is between 10% and 15% and probably to the nearest 10 metres if steeper than that. (So I can work out how hard it would be.)

If on my singlespeed bike, I would want to know lengths to sub-10 metres and gradients to within 1%. (So I could work out if I could actually ride up the damn thing.)

Why worry about how hard a climb is? In my book on a new climb knowing what's ahead makes the challenge harder.

For example we headed over to Ashworth Valley recently, 2.4 mile cat 3. I didn't know this till afterwards. After I'd ridden over the first summit I shouted to my partner "Is that it?" "No, two miles to go " That wasn't an answer which helped!!!!

 

[night cycler]

Thank you for the replies. Yesterday I tackled Jenkin road in Sheffield S9 area for the first time. I've known for a while that it is fairly steep. I went the full length and I stopped 4 times for a breather. Hence I did not find it 'easy' but I managed it, eventually. It is surprising how much you can recover in just 2 minutes.

EDIT: when I have conquered this in one go, if ever I do, I would be interested in which hill in the area is the 'next hardest'.

 

[lazybloke]

If you know the name of the hill / climb you have always look for it in your preferred search engine followed by 'veloviewer'.

e.g searching for Box Hill veloviewer gave me this link https://veloviewer.com/segments/3623111 and Sheephouse Lane veloviewer this one https://veloviewer.com/segment/696403/Sheep+House+Ln+Climb.

It might be useful to know that the segment numbers used by veloviewer are the same as used by strava.
So if you can't find a veloviewer segment by google, you might find it in strava using the name or map search to get the number nnnnnn

Then view it with the corresponding url: veloviewer.com/segment/nnnnnn/

 

[Ian H]

1:25000 OS maps do the trick very well.

 

[Mike_P]

Google streetscene can help to get an impression of a climb and its approaches, a climb with a pretty much a straight approach is a different proposition to one with a sharpish bend leading to it.

Few British climbs are a constant gradient, varying every few metres. A flatish section on a climb can be useful as I found last week getting battered by a cross wind to pause on to recover before tackling the rest.

 

[night cycler]

I just came by this info/suggestions for steep climbs in Sheffield.
The definitive list of cycling climbs *in* Sheffield - Digital Cyclist
https://digitalcyclist.co.uk/cycling/top-hills/the-definitive-list-of-cycling-climbs-in-sheffield/