Wahoo Summit Freeride Mode: First Ride Test!

Wahoo has announced their own free-riding version of their climbing metrics, akin to Garmin’s free-ride ClimbPro and Hammerhead’s free-ride CLIMBER. This allows you to ride without any course/route loaded, and get climb metrics, including distance/gradient to the top of the climb, as well as estimated time to the top of the climb.

This update will be available for the Wahoo ELEMNT ROAM V2 and BOLT V2, starting Tuesday May 2nd, 2023. Till then, you can keep re-reading and refreshing this page and the video up above to get your fill.

At a high level, the core Summit Freeride features are:

- Detects climbs automatically as you ride, no course required (expanding on their previous Summit course mode)
- Shows current gradient, current climb time
- Shows upcoming grade profile
- Shows vertical to go, distance to go, average grade of the CLIMB, estimated time remaining
- Customization of which climb categories are triggered

Now, looking at the above list, all of those features are largely the same as their competitors. However, there are four notable differences that are executed better than others (or the others simply don’t have):

- Shows chevrons on the map page illustration the climb portion of the road/trail
- Now shows steeper and shorter climbs than others
- Allows you to place Summit data fields on any data page, not just limited to a pre-canned one
- Shows upcoming elevation profile beyond the top of the climb

In particular, on the gradient thresholds– Wahoo’s existing climb triggers for climbs at 500m in length AND at least 3% average gradient. This is in the ballpark of what Garmin (500m/3%) and Hammerhead (400/3%) already do.

However, the new update will also now trigger for shorter climbs from 400m at 3%, scaling down to 250m with 7% average gradient. That’s super useful for the short-steep-sucky climbs on the road, but also off-road where MTB climbs can often be shorter in length.

#WahooROAMV2 #WahooSummit #WahooBOLTV2