Adventures with Coros: Climbing, E-Biking, and the Vertix 2S
Navigating the challenges of climbing, e-biking, and recovery with the Coros Vertix 2S—what it excels at and where it doesn’t work for me (yet).
Photo by: Photo: Courtesy Coros
El Capitan, 2021 – I’m with Lewis Wu, founder of Coros, and we’re 500 feet up El Cap, and things aren’t going well. I’d been overdoing it – which I didn’t think was possible when it came to e-biking and climbing – and my body was breaking down. A week before, I was at the Yosemite Boulder Farm in Mariposa when, after doing a compression move and high stepping, it felt like lightning shot through my rib cage. The next day, I went to another bouldering area in the Sierra foothills to do my usual circuit when my ribs felt immense pain as soon as I got on the rock. It turned out I’d gotten costochondritis, meaning the cartilage in my rib cage had enflamed, which made it feel like I had a chest full of broken ribs. I should have been home resting, but I wasn’t, so instead, I chose to bail off the climb as the thought of leading the famed chimney higher, called the Half Dollar, seemed ludicrous given my pain.
That was the first day I wore the Coros Vertix 2, which Lu had gifted me. Wu loves climbing in Yosemite and is, let’s call it, obsessed with tracking performance statistics. While I writhed in pain on the route and storm clouds threatened above, he told me how he used it every day he went to the gym, wore it on all his climbs, and loved how it tracked his vertical progress, falls, heart rate, and sleep. He also worked with a variety of my climbing partners, from Max Buschini to Matt Cornell to Ryan Sheridan. He also sponsored many top climbers, including Tommy Caldwell, Hans Florine, and Sasha DiGuilian.
After my costochondritis (which can come “from physical strain from repeated exercise”) passed a week later, I crashed my e-bike, broke a few ribs, and bruised my liver. Shortly after, doctors diagnosed me with my next condition, alopecia (and then my house burned down, which didn’t help my situation). After that, I got Covid-19, which, due to my weakened state and the autoimmune suppressants I took to get my hair back, made me severely sick. Covid leaked into my lungs, and for a month, I couldn’t leave the house without getting winded.
All the while I tracked my stats via the Vertix 2. The first sign something was wrong (Covid) was when I e-rode home from town and my heart rate was through the roof – well over 200 – on a hill climb that was relatively easy. As I have since that first day I wore it on El Cap with Lu, I’ve tracked my sleep and recovery, which has been helpful in my tracking my overall wellness.
Eventually, my hair grew back, and I kicked Covid-19 – I was lucky, and it only took a year for my eyebrows to come back – and I got back to my routine, which includes climbing, e-biking, and writing.
This year, I got the new Vertix 2S watch, which is more accurate than the previous model and has a sensor that takes more readings of my vitals than the 2. The rides continued, and soon, I was guiding e-bike tours daily (that’s my main gig), up to 150 miles a week. Since there isn’t an e-bike setting (though you can build a custom setting, which I didn’t like, so I stuck with the regular biking option), I’d often come home from riding and climbing all day to see that the watch thought I was dead. It often ready 3 percent of life remaining and it told me I was overdoing it. I felt fine, so I didn’t take that number too seriously. To put in comparison, this past Saturday, I rode 60 miles in a day and over a mile of vert with my co-guide at Yosemite E-biking, 79-year-old Ira Estin, and the ride didn’t phase him at all.
One thing I love about the watch is the 3-D mapping feature. I track all my rides and I Airdrop the map and images from them with my clients and friends. The mapping helps me find the easiest routes for my clients—terrain that isn’t too steep so they don’t destroy the brakes or crash from going too fast around corners.
Recently, I also met up with Sasha and as we climbed, I did my best to track everything for this story. I used the heart monitor that fastens to your bicep and the carabiner attachment, which clicks to your harness, which allowed me to protect the watch while jamming Yosemite’s awesome cracks. We donned our watches and climbed a four-pitch 5.11d/12a mixed route called Killa Beez at the Chapel Wall. I turned the climbing setting on my watch and up went went.
I’d seen Coros footage of Hans climbing the North Face of the Rostrum, which looked great, and where he tracked everything. I’d also seen videos of gym climbers on power endurance boulder problems and liked how accurately the watch tracked their heart rates. As the watch showed and is obvious, when you’re scared or over gripping, your heart rate goes through the roof.
I mostly track my daily rides, sometimes bouldering sessions—like this morning—and sleep. I’ve tracked more than 12,000 miles of e-biking, mapped hundreds of rides, taken the relevant info, and ignored things that didn’t make sense (no watch, I’m still alive, I can tell because I’m still breathing).
While climbing with Sasha, I did my best to track everything, from the maps to the heart rate of each pitch. It became a distraction – I’d reach the anchor and change pitches on the watch, click here, click there. Despite my best efforts, my map was garbled and my stats seemed way off.
When e-biking, I liked how I could turn on a setting and go. I set it to send my stats to Strava, which upset all the local riders whose records I smash daily since the Coros app fed my e-bike stats if I was on a regular pedal bike. Unless I quickly adjust Strava to say I was e-biking, I get flagged for cheating and get complaints from the Strava community. (Sorry I took your KOM record, bro, it wasn’t personal.)
My takeaway is that when it comes to muilti-pitching, the Coros Vertix 2S doesn’t work for me (personally). Between my wearable tech watch, smartphone, Bluetooth speaker, and any other gizmo I’m wearing are more of a distraction than a performance tool. I spend more time pushing buttons than focusing on the task at hand. I know when I’m winded, know when I’m rested and I generally know where I am in Yosemite when climbing, and I don’t need a watch to tell me that.
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t work, but I think if I ever climbed in the gym, that’s where it would shine. I can imagine using it when auto-belaying and running laps until I can’t move, and it would be perfect for that since I’m in a controlled setting. But when climbing outside, while placing cams, clipping bolts, and calling take! when I’m over it, the watch isn’t helping.
When I was in Dubai recently for a press trip with Land Rover, where we drove through a gazelle reserve, one friend told me he didn’t want to get performance anxiety when it came to sleep, so he opted to pass on my offer to let him borrow it for the night. So, I guess it’s not for everyone.
What I like most about it is how it tracks my distance in real-time, so I know exactly how far I am into my rides with clients. This makes it indispensable since this way, I can theorize how often I need to change my client’s e-bike batteries before they run out of juice. I know at mile 6, there is a cherry stand, mile 12 is the Striped Rock overlook, mile 18 is where I cut over to the oldest road in Mariposa, mile 22 is where the river is, and mile 26 is where the Clydesdale farm is.
On my days off and when combining climbing and e-biking outings, I know I’ve been on the move for 6, 8 hours, logged some 50 miles, and climbed until I was gassed, and how many calories I burned approximately. The latter isn’t accurate; for example, this past weekend, it told me I burned nearly 4,000 calories, which I take with a grain of salt as the watch doesn’t know I’m on an e-bike and thinks I’m trying to exercise myself to an early grave. If a near-80-year-old can do what I’m doing and I’m half his age, it’s safe to say I’m not overdoing it.
It does feel good to look over my yearly stats, though. I log the height of Everest monthly and climb nearly 500,000 vertical feet on my e-bike in a calendar year. Not bad for almost never getting in a car.
One thing I don’t love about it is how long it takes to get GPS info and my heart rate before I start riding. I have to wait a few minutes for it to get ready, and then it instructs me to sit still, which I can’t do since I’m always in motion. Thus, sometimes I forget to click it when I’m ready, and the tracking is a wash.
The Coros Vertix 2S uses dual frequency satellite tracking, advertises it has 40 days of battery life, has the latest optical heart rate sensor, is durable, and can withstand temps down to -22F and up to 122F (which it gets close to here in the Sierra foothills during summer) and offers offline maps and navigation. It tracks climbing, snow sports, ultra running and mountaineering. As for alpine climbing, I know Matt Cornell took it up 7700m Jannu in Pakistan. Their ascent is considered the most impressive alpine ascent in the past decade. He told me he tried tracking the climb on his carabiner watch attachment but that he snapped it off his harness and lost the watch.
Sasha and Coros have teamed up, and they make a special addition watch band that says Take the Lead, the title of her new autobiography. As I’ve seen in the videos she’s sent over to me, she says, “I like to wear the Pace 2 while I am training and going about my daily life. I like to use the stopwatch, HR metrics, sleep performance insights, and it’s pretty amazing for my cross-training when I run, bike, or do strength work.” Hans Florine, who for years held the Nose speed record on El Cap, and like me, he wears the Vertix2S.
Coros says their watches “cater to a variety of climbing disciplines, including indoor climbing. Record every pitch, difficulty, and climbing style effortlessly with Indoor Climb Mode, designed specifically for indoor lead climbing and top-roping.”
“For the first time ever, you can now record every pitch… Auto-Lead Fall Detection… Navigate to Your Climb… Base Fitness… and Sleep Tracking and HRV.”
Coros promotes using it for:
Outdoor Climbing. Track your session with Outdoor Climb Mode and monitor all of your multi-pitch climbs, approaches and descents along with other features as you send your next big project.
Bouldering. Record your bouldering sessions in V-scale with metrics such as Route Count, Route Grade, and more.
You can also use it to create your own climbing workouts, as seen here. And it offers Tips for Base Fitness.
Coros sponsors such alpinists and Jim Morrison, Steve House, and Luke Swithwick.
Coros athlete Tommy Caldwell says, “I was originally skeptical about data tracking for rock climbing. Over the years, Coros has made it super useful and fun. At the base of the route, I hit the button to change to ‘climb’ mode. This allows me to log pitches and monitor all my stats while climbing. I also switched the watch into the climbing locking carabiner and attached it to the back of my harness.”
When we started descending I forgot to switch to descend mode. The watch figured it out for me.”
Back to my experience with the Coros Vertix 2S, it’s worth noting that this is my first time using wearable tech, and I haven’t compared it to other smartwatches, including the Apple Watch, Garmin, etc. Sometimes, my clients have Apple Watches and Garmin, and they track our rides, and we talk metrics at the end of the ride.
Perhaps I’m too old school to geek out on all its features. But the features I love – maps, real-time tracking, and sleep tracking features, are why I use the watch daily. I also love the custom watch faces.
I eventually I broke the first watch band but buying a replacement was easy.
It may not be my go-to for tracking multi-pitch routes in Yosemite, but that’s okay. Perhaps I just haven’t figured it all out yet.
Coros Vertix 2S is $699 USD.
Colors: Available in Moon, Earth (out of stock), and Space. Accessories include the Coros POD 2, heart rate monitors in various colors, a carabiner, and additional bands for customization.
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