Cumbre del SolCat 2
- 3.73 km
- Length
- 9.8%
- Average
- 366 m
- Elevation gain
- 15.0%
- Steepest 500 m
- 428 m(GPX)
- Summit
Cumbre del Sol starts at the Alcasar roundabout, and there is no warm-up: the first kilometre averages above eleven per cent, and the steepest hundred metres — over twenty — comes after just two hundred. It is short, barely four kilometres, but the ten per cent average says little about how relentless it is. Go to your easiest gear at once. An 11/28 is too tall here. The road up from Benitachell is gentler and has stretches to recover on.
How long will Cumbre del Sol take you?
A rider at 3.0 W/kg takes about 26 minutes to climb Cumbre del Sol.
Put in your weight and the average power you hold on the gradient. We add 9 kg for bike and kit. The model works the time out from physics, and it has been tested against real rides.
Riders
The road
Cumbre del Sol is not a pass. It climbs through a coastal housing development and ends at the masts on top — there is no road down the other side.
The road is wide, the surface good and the bends few. Technique is not what makes this one hard.
The mountain is called Puig de la Llorença. Cumbre del Sol is the name of the development the road runs through, and that is the name that stuck. The Vuelta a España has finished here several times, on the same road you ride.
The climb
The steepest part comes first. From the roundabout the road rises above sixteen per cent within four hundred metres, and the hardest hundred metres — 21 per cent — sits at km 0.2.
The second and third kilometres are the 'easiest': nine, and just under nine per cent. Still steep enough that your heart rate will not drop, but this is where you can find a cadence.
The fourth kilometre tightens again, above ten per cent, and the final stretch to the masts decides how you remember the climb.
There are no flat sections. From bottom to top there is nowhere to breathe.
