Not quite exuding the same glamour as the Alpe d'Huez, the hard-earned summit of the Pico de Veleta. |
Region: Andalucia, Southern Spain
Departure: Monachil
Length: 46.6km
Altitude: 3,384 m
Height Gain: 2,662 m
Average gradient: 5.7%
Maximum gradient: 17.0%
Category: Above Classification
Departure: Monachil
Length: 46.6km
Altitude: 3,384 m
Height Gain: 2,662 m
Average gradient: 5.7%
Maximum gradient: 17.0%
Category: Above Classification
Add another 500-plus kilometers and you get the Above Classification climb, Pico de Veleta,which stands prominently in Spain's Sierra Nevada Range. Way higher than any road mountain used in a grand tour, and with snow permanently fastened to its desolate moonscape summit - even during the height of summer - you could say it is something of a cycling anachronism.
While the Vuelta ventures part of the way up the spine
of the Sierra Nevada, the colossal Andalucian range to which it belongs, it has
travelled no higher than 2,550 metres. More than 800 vertical metres and 10
kilometres of seldom-used road silently awaits those willing to venture as far
as the road will take them, just 11 metres beneath the Veleta’s peak.
But it’s not just the gradient and the state of the
road that make the final stretch up the Veleta so gruelling. It’s the lack of oxygen,
which steadily diminishes the higher you travel. Suffice to say, trying to
reach the top of the climb’s 3,384 metre peak, still a long, long way above,
was for me, venturing into the unknown.
Buoyed by the fact that I most likely would have
ridden 44 of the roads’ 46 kilometres by the time I reached the summit, I
frustratingly pressed on in the dying afternoon. Eventually, the narrow road,
made of nothing more than black earth and gravel, switched back in the opposite
direction in the final stretch to the top.
Taking in sweeping views from all directions, it
seemed a shame that the Pico de Veleta’s summit, the second highest along the
Sierra Nevada range, was deserving of such a disappointing end. On reflection,
perhaps a mountain so unimaginable to climb deserves better than the circus
that accompanies an event like the Vuelta a España. Too high and remote in any case for the
professionals, it’s better left to the weekend warriors who have no better
reason to head on up than because it’s there.
More to Come: Cycling in Spain
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