The Climb Print
Passo dello Stelvio, hairpin by hairpin.
The Passo dello Stelvio from Prato allo Stelvio: 24.5 km of the SS38 climbing 1,839 metres to the pass at 2,757 metres, drawn over the contour lines of the mountain, with its 48 hairpins numbered down to 1 at the top.
From £19.95 unframed, £59.95 framed · Your own time on it, if you like.
What the print holds
Passo dello Stelvio on paper
Drawn whole, the road would shrink the Stelvio's bends to nothing, so the map is framed on the upper 11.5 km, from km 13 to the pass. The first stretch out of Prato and the first four hairpins run off the top edge of the sheet. Nothing is cut from the profile beneath, which carries the climb from its foot at 918 metres.
On the map the road enters at the top right and climbs a cluster of hairpins on the right-hand side, their numbers in the forties and thirties. Then it turns west and runs along the valley side through a long chain of bends, counting down through the thirties into the teens, and it finishes at the far left in a dense stack of hairpins, 12 down to 1, where the pass is.
The lower road, off the map, climbs gently. Out of Prato the first kilometre is 3.2%, and the next four run at 6.5%, 6.0%, 5.7% and 5.9%. The sixth is the first steep one, at 8.6%, and the seventh drops back to 4.2%. On the way the road passes Gomagoi, goes through a gallery, and turns through the first two hairpins just before Trafoi. The tenth kilometre, at 5.3%, is the last under 7% until the short final piece.
From there the profile hardly lets up. The eleventh and twelfth are 8.3% and 8.7%; the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth, all of them on the map, come at 9.8%, 9.4% and 10.1%, the last being the steepest kilometre of the climb. Beyond the seventeenth the gradient stays between 7.4% and 9.6% as far as the twenty-fourth kilometre, and only the last short piece to the pass eases, to 4.9%. Taken from the foot, the average is 7.5%.
The Giro d'Italia first crossed the pass in 1953, when Fausto Coppi dropped Hugo Koblet on the Stelvio and took the pink jersey on the stage to Bormio. Since 1965 the highest point of each Giro has carried his name, the Cima Coppi.
Passo dello Stelvio, kilometre by kilometre
The gradient of every kilometre, as the profile on the print colours it: 24.5 km, 1,839 m gained, 7.5% on average, the steepest kilometre the seventeenth at 10.1%.
- 13.2%
- 26.5%
- 36.0%
- 45.7%
- 55.9%
- 68.6%
- 74.2%
- 87.6%
- 97.7%
- 105.3%
- 118.3%
- 128.7%
- 137.9%
- 147.2%
- 159.8%
- 169.4%
- 1710.1%
- 187.4%
- 198.5%
- 208.5%
- 219.6%
- 228.1%
- 238.1%
- 248.5%
- 25518 m4.9%
Three ways to draw Passo dello Stelvio
The same road and the same profile each time, and every palette in the Studio on top of them.
How it works
From the Studio to your wall in three steps.
Step 01
Choose your subject
Connect Strava in one tap for a race, a ride or a whole year. Or search for a place, type a postcode for your street on the old Ordnance Survey, or add a photograph — none of those needs an account.
Step 02
Choose your style
Start from a finished design and make it yours: the words, the colours, the size. Twenty-three styles for your own miles, four treatments for a place, six layouts for a photograph, and the old survey as drawn or in your colours.
Step 03
We print and frame it
Pick a frame, check out, and it is printed to order on fine-art paper, framed by hand and posted to you, tracked.
Passo dello Stelvio climb print: the questions
Why do the hairpins count down from 48?
Because the road counts them that way. Stones beside it number each hairpin, from 48, the first, below Trafoi, to 1 at the pass, and the print follows them; at Trafoi, 46 of the 48 are still to come. Since the four lowest are off the top of the map, the numbering on the sheet begins in the forties.
When is the road over the pass open?
Usually from late May or early June until the first heavy snow of the autumn. Through the winter the road over the pass is shut from both sides, so the climb from Prato is a summer ride, and an early one can still pass between banks of snow near the top.
Can Franzenshöhe be marked?
The Berghotel Franzenshöhe sits high on the climb, at about 2,200 metres. Buildings are not part of the drawing, which is the road and the slope it crosses, so give it a named point and the print labels the spot with your words.
Where do the road and the gradients come from?
The road is OpenStreetMap’s, as Overture Maps publishes it, traced from Prato allo Stelvio to Passo dello Stelvio. The heights are the Terrain Tiles Mapzen built and AWS Open Data hosts, read every ten metres along the road, with the foot set to 918 m and the top to 2,757 m, the signposted heights; each kilometre’s gradient is measured on that line. Where the road runs through forest the elevation data can read a kilometre a point or so steeper or gentler than the tarmac, so the figure for a single kilometre is close rather than exact; the length, the height gained and the average are the climb’s.
Can I put my own time on it?
Yes. Type it in the Studio with the day you rode it, or bring in your Strava rides and choose the one: the Studio reads your time from the foot to the top off the track, rather than the whole ride. It sits in the corner of the print, where the other prints keep their statistics, and comes off again with one tap.
Can I have a climb that is not on this list?
Not as The Climb Print yet: each climb is traced from its road and checked against its published figures and its numbered bends before it is offered. Any mountain can be The Mountain Print, though, drawn in its own contour lines with the ride you recorded on Strava laid over it.
- Made to orderPrinted for you, never from stock
- Fine-art paperArchival inks, framed by hand
- Tracked deliveryUK delivery £7.85, tracked · worldwide, priced at checkout
- Arrives damaged?We replace it, no quibble
Passo dello Stelvio, on the wall.
Compose it free in the Studio: the treatment, the palette, your own words beneath and your time to the top in the corner. Order it when it is the climb you rode.
How The Climb Print works · Every climb · Paper, frames and sizes