Longest road climb in mainland europe?

[Cyril Haearn]

The Pico de Valeta climb in the Sierra Nevada looks a contender: according to RideWithGPS, from Granada it up goes from 700 to 2500, so a continuous climb of 1800m.

The normal end to the climb is at the barrier that stops vehicular traffic (with the exception of those that have keys, eg for observatory access), but there's no problem taking bikes past. The road is surfaced up to the last ski lift at about 3200 m, though the surface isn't in wonderful condition (I kept down to about 20 mph on the way down, to give myself time to stop for potholes if required).
The upper section is also usually closed by snow during the spring cycling season, so one-off tracks like RWGPS are often incomplete.

What about the thin air at 10,000'? Do you notice it, is it hard to breathe when going up?

[Mick F]

I cycled up Vesuvius some years ago. 1989?
Sea level in Naples, then up to the seismic observatory and beyond ............. near the summit.
Dunno about the ascent, it was back in the days before GPS etc but it was a long way up and a zig zag road.

Did it on my Mercian!

[Vorpal]

What about the thin air at 10,000'? Do you notice it, is it hard to breathe when going up?

I've been at similar altitudes in the Rocky Mountains, and I certainly noticed it going up. I was out of breath more easily, and my nose ran, like I"d been out in the cold. It wasn't as bad after I'd spent a night in it (we camped at 11000ish feet).

[andrew_s]

What about the thin air at 10,000'? Do you notice it, is it hard to breathe when going up?

It's certainly noticeable, but more on the lines of more & heavier breathing or running out of breath earlier than the amount of effort would normally warrant than any difficulty breathing. I never noticed a runny nose.

On the Veleta, a steady climbing pace was OK, and altitude was only a problem on the final 2 km where it was steeper and unsurfaced with loose gravel, so if you had to stomp to maintain progress you ran out of breath and had to stop for a short while to recover.
In the hotel in Lhasa (3500 m), there was no problem running up the flight and a half of steps to the bedroom corridor, but if you did, you started puffing and blowing shortly after getting to the top, and didn't stop for a couple of minutes. Similarly, when you stopped for a photo on the flat at about 4000 m (13,000 ft), if you'd dropped back more than you could manage in a short sprint (~50 m), you had to catch up gradually over the next mile or so.

[andrew_s]

Here's the profile of the Sierra Nevada climb, to the top of the paved section: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/19049867
Here's (some of) the Cime de Bonette climb that was mentioned https://ridewithgps.com/routes/19050030 as far as 1923m. For some reason RideWithGPS won't let me plot to the top, but I can see it could easily be the winner, in terms of both length and height gain.

The Sierra Nevada road is paved past there (see previous post)
For the Bonette, it looks like RideWithGPS has a 100 km segment length limit on it. I used cycle.travel/map to get the numbers.

[foxyrider]

We still don't have a formula for determination here.

May I suggest that we use an arbitrary 2% average as the base point so we look at a slightly wider spectrum than just high. This allows for blips on climbs and also filters out just stating the longest river ( the Elbe for example hardly loses height for hundreds of kilometres but could claim to rise from sea level!)

So the question becomes 'longest climb of minimum 2% gradient in Europe.'

Just an idea

[wizard]

I can recommend the Colle del Nivolet, one of the highest paved climbs in Italy (2612m). See my ride, https://ridewithgps.com/trips/6605135
From Cuorgne it was almost 60km climbing, although I have to admit the first part isn't too hard.

That looks a good one, thanks. From 400 to over 2600 that's 2200m +.
Your track doesn't quite seem to go to the top though, is there a reason for that?

We went until the pass. The asphalt road continuous a few km further downhill after the top until a lake, from there it's a gravel road and finally a footpath to the other side of the valley. Some cyclists have done the descent though.