Beginning January 1, 2026, RUSA credit (currently: distance and unpaved distance) will extend to include climbing. Brevet routes and calendared events will list the amount of climbing, and climbing will be included on event and rider results pages.

Will there be climbing awards?

Yes. The Awards Review Committee and the Board will use 2026 as an evaluation period before establishing thresholds to use for climbing awards. These awards will apply retroactively to all climbing credit earned in 2026.

How is the amount of climbing determined?

The sole source for estimating climbing on a ride is the official RideWithGPS (RWGPS) route. Results from a ride activity may not be used.

Why RideWithGPS? It has <problem>.

Estimation of climbing by RWGPS route is imperfect and has a number of known issues, but it does a decent job and standardizing on this single source of truth means that every rider's estimated climbing can be imperfect in a consistent manner. Using a single tool across RUSA's various processes also has several advantages and significantly reduces administrative overhead.

What if I ride a permanent in reverse?

Riding a permanent in reverse (in particular, point-to-point routes) can affect the amount of climbing due to the net elevation difference at the start vs the end of the route. During results submission, you will be prompted for the direction the permanent was ridden in order to apply this adjustment.

What if I skip some climbing by free-routing?

The results submission page will offer a field for reporting a lower amount of climbing due to free-routing. No credit will be awarded for doing extra climbing. That said, an appropriately controlled route should make it difficult to find a shorter/easier path that visits all the controls, so most likely if you've found a way to reduce the climbing, it involves making life more difficult in some other fashion.

Will team events have climbing credit?

Yes. You can get climbing credit for your team event, but your team is responsible for providing the organizer with a RWGPS route corresponding to what you rode during the ride, including any meaningful deviations from your original route. Organizers should communicate expectations in order to facilitate a timely RWGPS collection ahead of results submission. If your team does not provide your RWGPS route in a timely manner, RBAs may use their judgment to submit results without climbing data and your team will forfeit any climbing credit.

When creating your RWGPS route, do not simply import activity tracks as a route. This does not rely on RWGPS's terrain data. You can however use the Manual Trace feature to convert tracks from an activity into a route.