Col du Galibier cycling climb map

by Sidney van den Boogaard

From Valloire the Galibier lets you settle in. For about ten kilometres the road follows a wide, open valley, climbing steadily while the mountains around you turn ever more barren. At Plan Lachat the easy part is over: from there it is roughly eight kilometres at around 8.5 per cent, zigzagging up the bare slope. At Les Granges du Galibier, some four kilometres from the top, stands the memorial to Marco Pantani. The old tunnel is closed to cyclists, so you go over the real summit, above 2,600 metres, with the monument to Henri Desgrange just beyond. For riders who remember the thin air up there.

This work is part of the Legendary Climbs collection: the most famous climbs in road cycling, from the Alps and the Pyrenees to the short, steep hills of Flanders and Limburg. Each climb is drawn from the real road, with the elevation profile coloured per kilometre and, along the bottom, the length, elevation gain, average and maximum gradient and the summit.

The road is drawn from OpenStreetMap data (© OpenStreetMap contributors) and the profile from Copernicus elevation data (EU-DEM). A great gift for any cyclist, to hang next to the bike or as a goal for next season.