Climbs

The Super Planche des Belles Filles is the mountain of destiny of the modern Tour de France. A former ski slope in the Vosges, only on the route since 2012, and since then more Tours have been decided here than on most alpine passes. Short, brutally steep, and with a gravel finale that exists nowhere…

The Passo Manghen is the climb where Eddy Merckx cracked. 1976, his last Giro. Today, the only drivable crossing between the Valsugana and the Fiemme valley is one of the longest and loneliest HC climbs in Italy. The Passo Manghen at a glance From Borgo Valsugana in the south it is 23.5 kilometres and 1,656…

21 hairpins. Numbered in reverse. Every single one carries the name of a Tour stage winner. Riding Alpe d’Huez means riding through the history of cycling. Alpe d’Huez at a glance The climb starts in Le Bourg-d’Oisans at just over 700 metres: 13.8 kilometres, 1,090 metres of climbing, averaging 7.9 percent with ramps of almost…

Written on the tarmac of the Muro di Sormano are the altitude marks, split times and quotes of the riders who nearly fell off their bikes here in 1960. A wall with built-in historiography: 1.7 kilometres averaging 17 percent, peaking at 27. The Muro di Sormano at a glance The full ascent from Asso to…

The Glaubenbergpass is the Swiss pass for people who do not like tour buses. Sitting between Obwalden and the Lucerne Entlebuch, it links Sarnen and Entlebuch across the largest moorland in Switzerland. No postcard classic, but hard and wonderfully quiet. The Glaubenbergpass at a glance From Sarnen it is 14.1 kilometres and 1,071 metres of…

Rocacorba is the most famous climb that has never seen a professional race. The dead-end road up the Puigsou near Girona became a benchmark anyway: this is where WorldTour pros test their form, ever since Girona became their adopted home. Rocacorba at a glance From Banyoles it is 11.8 kilometres and 792 metres of climbing…

The Passo Lanciano is only half the truth. Most riders who climb it want to go further: to the Blockhaus, the bare summit ridge of the Majella in the Abruzzo. Together they add up to the biggest elevation gain of any paved road in Italy, and one of the hardest climbs in Europe. Passo Lanciano…

The Alto de l’Angliru in Asturias is widely considered the hardest climb professional cycling rides on a regular basis. A former cattle track, paved, wrapped in fog and turned into a stage by the Vuelta a España. The numbers are brutal, but they only tell half the story: the second half of the Angliru is…

The Tourmalet is the pass the Tour de France has crossed more often than any other. Since 1910, around 90 times. No other climb has written this many stories, and none carries more Tour DNA in its asphalt than this giant of the Pyrenees. The Tourmalet at a glance From Luz-Saint-Sauveur in the west it…

The Col de Tende is the southernmost of the great Alpine passes, on the border between France and Italy, separating the Maritime Alps from the Ligurian Alps. People have crossed, traded and fought here for more than 2,000 years. For cyclists it is one of a kind: the famous 46 hairpins to the pass are…

The Kitzbüheler Horn is Austria’s steepest road climb. The panoramic road from Kitzbühel to the Alpenhaus is the opposite of an alpine pass: no transit, no hairpin romance, just a wall with asphalt on it. If you have anything left afterwards, the narrow summit road continues to just below the transmitter tower at almost 2,000…

The Nufenen Pass connects the Goms in Valais with the Bedretto valley in Ticino, at 2,478 metres. That makes it the highest pass road lying entirely within Switzerland. It is also one of the youngest: the road only opened in 1969. From Ulrichen the Nufenen is a compact, honest high-mountain climb without a single recovery…

The Col de la Loze is the youngest myth in cycling. A bike path to 2,301 metres, only paved in 2019, car-free between Méribel and Courchevel, and already the stage for three Tour de France showdowns. Not a historic pass, but a climb built directly for cyclists. With ramps that take even the pros apart.…

At 2,764 metres, the Col de l’Iseran is the highest paved mountain pass in the Alps. In Savoie it connects the high valleys of the Isère and the Arc as part of the Route des Grandes Alpes. Approach from the north and you have almost 50 kilometres of climbing ahead of you. What counts here…

The Ötztal Glacier Road is not a pass but a dead end with a statement: from Sölden up to the Rettenbach Glacier and through the Rosi Mittermaier Tunnel to the Tiefenbach Glacier. At the tunnel exit, at 2,829 metres, lies the highest point in the Alps you can reach on asphalt. In between are 14…

The Susten Pass connects the Bernese Oberland with the canton of Uri, from the Hasli valley at Innertkirchen up to the summit tunnel at 2,224 metres and down to Wassen in the Meiental. The road was built between 1938 and 1945 purely as a tourist road, and that is exactly how it rides: even, wide,…

The Madonna del Ghisallo is no ordinary climb. On top of the hill at Magreglio, high above Lake Como, stands the sanctuary of the patron saint of cyclists. No other place connects cycling and myth this directly. As a physical test the Ghisallo is very manageable. As a piece of cycling history it is one…

The Albulapass links Bergün in the Albula valley with La Punt in the Upper Engadine, at 2,315 metres, deep in the Albula Alps of Graubünden. A high, quiet pass that most people only know from the train. The Albula tunnel of the Rhaetian Railway runs beneath the pass road, and the railway line above it…

2,642 metres. One of the highest paved passes in the Alps. The Col du Galibier separates the Maurienne valley from the Briançonnais and has been a fixture of the Tour de France for over a hundred years. At the summit stands a monument to Henri Desgrange, the founder of the Tour. It could not be…

Southwest of the Gavia Pass lies the Passo del Mortirolo, also known as the Passo della Foppa. From Mazzo di Valtellina it is one of the most feared climbs in Italy and a fixture of the Giro d’Italia. No high pass, no grand panorama, instead a narrow forest road with gradients that push even the…