# Finding your climbs

https://ridejournal.app/guides/finding-your-climbs/
Last updated: 2026-08-21


There is nothing to switch on. Ride Journal reads the elevation profile of the ride you already did and picks out every sustained rise, on the device, as soon as the ride is imported.

<p class="shot-row"><img eleventy:pictureattr:class="shot shot-light" eleventy:widths="260,520" sizes="260px" src="/assets/guides/light/04-entry-climbs.png" alt="A climb card showing its route, a steepness-shaded elevation profile and its statistics."><img eleventy:pictureattr:class="shot shot-dark" eleventy:widths="260,520" sizes="260px" src="/assets/guides/dark/04-entry-climbs.png" alt="" aria-hidden="true"><img eleventy:pictureattr:class="shot shot-light" eleventy:widths="260,520" sizes="260px" src="/assets/guides/light/17-climb-second.png" alt="The next climb in the same ride, with its own map, profile and statistics."><img eleventy:pictureattr:class="shot shot-dark" eleventy:widths="260,520" sizes="260px" src="/assets/guides/dark/17-climb-second.png" alt="" aria-hidden="true"></p>

Every rise gets its own card, from a short suburban drag to a proper mountain, the road you took, the profile, and the numbers behind it: length, elevation gain, time on the climb, average and maximum grade, and the height at the summit. Swipe through the climbs to see what each is about.

## Reading the shading

The profile is shaded by how steep it got, in five bands:

| Band | Grade |
| --- | --- |
| Gentle | under 4% |
| Moderate | 4–7% |
| Hard | 7–10% |
| Steep | 10–13% |
| Brutal | 13% and up |

## Categories

Climbs are categorised the way cycling does it — **Cat 4** through **Cat 1**, then **HC**, Hors Catégorie, for the ones that are off the scale. A rise has to be both steep enough and big enough to earn a category; everything else is still detected and still gets its own card, badged **NC**.


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Ride Journal — https://ridejournal.app/
Site index for language models: https://ridejournal.app/llms.txt