Port de BèrniaCat 2
- 14.6 km
- Length
- 2.4%
- Average
- 349 m
- Elevation gain
- 11.0%
- Steepest 500 m
- 616 m(GPX)
- Summit
Bèrnia is not a climb in the ordinary sense. Twelve of the fifteen kilometres are flat or gently falling, and the whole height gain is taken in the last three — where the road goes above eight per cent and the steepest hundred metres reaches 14.5 per cent. The 2.4 per cent average is therefore close to meaningless. You ride a long rolling approach and then a short hard wall.
How long will Port de Bèrnia take you?
A rider at 3.0 W/kg takes about 47 minutes to climb Port de Bèrnia.
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
The road runs from the coast at Calpe inland towards the Bèrnia ridge, and most of it is an ordinary country road between smallholdings and villas.
The last third is something else: narrower, steeper, and with the coast and the Peñón de Ifach behind you the whole way up.
Along the way you give back 53 metres of height, spread through the flat section.
The climb
The first twelve kilometres do almost nothing. Some sit at zero, some fall slightly, and only the fifth rises noticeably at five per cent. This is transport.
From the thirteenth the climb arrives. Three kilometres at between eight and nine per cent with no let-up, and the steepest hundred metres — 14.5 per cent — sits at km 13.3.
It is an unusual shape: you are not tired when it starts, but you have not found a rhythm either. The last three kilometres have to be ridden as a climb of their own.
