The Climb Print
Passo di Gavia, hairpin by hairpin.
The Passo di Gavia from Ponte di Legno: 16.9 km of the SS300 and 1,318 metres of climbing up a narrowing valley to the pass at 2,621 metres, drawn over its contour lines, with the gradient of every kilometre coloured in the profile below.
From £19.95 unframed, £59.95 framed · Your own time on it, if you like.
What the print holds
Passo di Gavia on paper
The road sets off from Ponte di Legno at the bottom of the map and heads north up the valley. About halfway up the sheet it gathers into a knot of tight bends; above them it settles on a north-north-westerly line and climbs the narrowing valley to the pass at the top. The bends are drawn as the road takes them, without numbers.
The profile begins at the road's low point in Ponte di Legno, 1,303 metres, and it begins quietly: 4.6% for the first kilometre, 2.9% for the second, 5.7% for the third. Sant'Apollonia comes at about km 4, and the fourth kilometre rises to 9.2%. Above Sant'Apollonia the road narrows.
After 6.9% and 7.2% for the fifth and sixth, the seventh kilometre reaches 11.1%, the first over 10%, and the eighth holds 9.1%. Five kilometres follow between 7.0% and 9.1% — 7.9%, 8.1%, 7.0%, 9.1% and 7.9% — and then the fourteenth, at 13.2%, the steepest kilometre on the climb and the only other one past 10%.
Beyond it the road is steadier, at 7.6%, 7.7% and 7.2% to the pass. Read as a whole, the profile has two kilometres that stand apart from everything around them, the seventh and the fourteenth. What lies between them is steady climbing in the sevens, eights and nines, and the three kilometres out of town before any of it are the easiest on the road. From Ponte di Legno the average comes to 7.8%.
The road over the pass is usually open from June to October, snow allowing. The Giro first crossed the Gavia in 1960, on the stage from Trento to Bormio. Imerio Massignan was first over the top but punctured on the descent, and Charly Gaul won in Bormio.
Passo di Gavia, kilometre by kilometre
The gradient of every kilometre, as the profile on the print colours it: 16.9 km, 1,318 m gained, 7.8% on average, the steepest kilometre the fourteenth at 13.2%.
- 14.6%
- 22.9%
- 35.7%
- 49.2%
- 56.9%
- 67.2%
- 711.1%
- 89.1%
- 97.9%
- 108.1%
- 117.0%
- 129.1%
- 137.9%
- 1413.2%
- 157.6%
- 167.7%
- 17879 m7.2%
Three ways to draw Passo di Gavia
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 di Gavia climb print: the questions
Why are the bends not numbered?
The print numbers hairpins only where the numbering is settled, and the counts published for the Gavia do not agree with one another. So every bend is drawn where it falls on the slope, and none of them is given a number.
Is this the side the Giro climbed in the snow in 1988?
Yes. On 5 June 1988 the Giro climbed the Gavia from Ponte di Legno in a snowstorm, on a road that was then partly unpaved. Erik Breukink won the stage in Bormio, and Andy Hampsten took the pink jersey, which he kept to win the race.
Can the top be marked, with the lake and the rifugio?
Lago Bianco and the Rifugio Bonetta are both at the pass. Neither is drawn, because the print keeps to the ground and the road, but a named point on the rifugio puts it at the top of the climb under whatever name you choose.
Where do the road and the gradients come from?
The road is OpenStreetMap’s, as Overture Maps publishes it, traced from Ponte di Legno to Passo di Gavia. 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 1,303 m and the top to 2,621 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 di Gavia, 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