Puerto de ConfridesCat 1
- 20.38 km
- Length
- 3.6%
- Average
- 729 m
- Elevation gain
- 7.4%
- Steepest 500 m
- 966 m(GPX)
- Summit
Confrides is long and not steep: twenty kilometres at 3.6 per cent, with no kilometre above six per cent. It is not the gradient that makes it demanding, it is that it does not end. The middle flattens almost completely — from the eighth to the thirteenth kilometre it sits below two per cent, and one kilometre tips slightly downhill. Then it starts climbing again for the last eight. Fill your bottles in Benasau; it is a long way to the next stop.
How long will Puerto de Confrides take you?
A rider at 3.0 W/kg takes about 72 minutes to climb Puerto de Confrides.
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 inland into the high country behind Aitana, through terraced hillsides and dry pine. It is wide, even and quiet.
Confrides is a valley, not a pass. You climb towards the village that gave the climb its name, and the landscape opens gradually rather than releasing you over a ridge.
Along the way you give back 82 metres of height. They come together in the middle section, and that is enough that you have to find your rhythm again afterwards.
The climb
The first seven kilometres are the real climb: between four and six per cent, with the steepest hundred metres — 9.4 per cent — at km 3.6.
Then it lets go entirely. From the eighth to the thirteenth kilometre the average is below two per cent, and the twelfth tips slightly downhill. You can eat and drink here, but you can also lose your tempo without noticing.
From the fourteenth it rises again, steadily around five per cent all the way to the top. The steepest sustained stretch — 7.4 per cent over five hundred metres — comes at km 12.7, right at the transition.
Twenty kilometres on the map, but only about half of them climb.
