Originally Posted by
GuitarBob
Despite the grumbling by a few, everyone knows that elevation gain per unit distance is one of the key measures of how challenging a ride is, so it makes sense to report it, at least to me. If what you were doing was combining those those measures -- distance and elevation -- is some clever way, I might be interested. But your 'climbing unit' is subjective, so it's doomed.
Yeah, ft/mi is pretty good as a "How hilly is that ride?" metric.