Originally Posted by
Seattle Forrest
Maybe in Florida. But a lot of cyclists like climbs.
Here's somebody's list of the 100 best climbs in America.
When you're doing Hurricane Ridge, you start at 0 feet and end at 5,240 feet above sea level. It's only 17 miles and parts are harder than others so you can't pace yourself by distance. Knowing your current elevation tells you how close you are, how much to go.
That's true of any climb.
You still don't need
absolute elevation for this. That's true of any climb. Obviously.
And the kind of scenarios you are talking about
aren't typical. Pointing out odd/strained exceptions to what's typical is silly.
Using the barometer is probably not a very good way of doing what you are talking about anyway.
It would be sort of easy if your ride happened to have the fairly-odd property of starting at sea level.
But it would be hard to do on more typical rides where you don't and where there might be multiple climbs you want to keep track of. Hard enough that it's likely that no one really ever does it!
It might be easier to use the elevation graph that some of the Garmins provide (which doesn't need any elevation measurement to work).