The Climb Print
Alpe d'Huez, hairpin by hairpin.
The D211 from Le Bourg-d'Oisans to Alpe d'Huez, drawn over the contour lines of its slope: 13.7 km and 1,120 metres of climbing, the 21 bends numbered as the road numbers them, and beneath it a profile coloured kilometre by kilometre by its gradient.
From £19.95 unframed, £59.95 framed · Your own time on it, if you like.
What the print holds
Alpe d'Huez on paper
The road leaves the valley floor at the bottom left of the map, turns north-east up the slope and is into its hairpins almost at once. Bends 21 to 13 are crowded together low on the mountainside in a tight stack, and bends 12 to 7 sit above them. A short, straighter stretch follows, then the second set, 6 to 1, higher up. After bend 1 the folding stops and the road runs in one long sweep north-east to the finish at the top right of the sheet, the stretch where it passes Vieil Alpe before the resort.
Underneath, the profile takes the same road a kilometre at a time, and the hard part comes first. The opening kilometre is 8.8%, the second 9.1%, and the third, at 10.7%, is the steepest on the climb. Set against the heights published for the bends — 21 at about 806 metres, 17 at about 965, 12 at about 1,161 — that third kilometre is climbed in the lower stack.
No kilometre after it reaches 10% again, though the seventh comes close at 9.9%. Between the two run 7.6%, 8.8% and 7.8%. The village of Huez sits around bends 6 and 7, where the first set of hairpins ends and the second begins.
The second half is gentler on the whole. The eighth kilometre is 7.8%, the ninth 6.6%, the easiest full kilometre on the road, and the tenth and eleventh 7.9% and 8.3%. After that the numbers fall away in order: 7.3%, then 7.0%, then 6.1% over the short final piece to the line at 1,850 metres, at the top of Avenue du Rif Nel. Over the whole road the average is 8.2%.
Alpe d'Huez, kilometre by kilometre
The gradient of every kilometre, as the profile on the print colours it: 13.7 km, 1,120 m gained, 8.2% on average, the steepest kilometre the third at 10.7%.
- 18.8%
- 29.1%
- 310.7%
- 47.6%
- 58.8%
- 67.8%
- 79.9%
- 87.8%
- 96.6%
- 107.9%
- 118.3%
- 127.3%
- 137.0%
- 14679 m6.1%
Three ways to draw Alpe d'Huez
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.
Alpe d'Huez climb print: the questions
Why does the climb start at 730 metres when Le Bourg-d'Oisans is lower?
Because the print measures the climb rather than the town. It begins at the foot of the first ramp, where the D211 leaves the valley road east of Le Bourg-d'Oisans and starts to rise at once; the town itself sits a little lower, on the flat floor of the valley. The length, the height gained and the average under the map are all counted from that first ramp.
Do the numbers match the signs on the bends?
They do: 21 is the lowest, and the count runs down to 1 near the top, as the road's own signs run. Those signs also carry the names of stage winners, and once all 21 bends had names the naming started again at bend 21. The Tour de France first came up here in 1952, when Fausto Coppi won the first summit finish in the race's history. The print keeps the numbers and leaves the names to the road.
Can Dutch Corner be marked?
Bend 7 is known as Dutch Corner, near the church of Saint-Ferréol at Huez, and its number is already on the print. The map holds the road and the ground, not the church or the village around it; add a named point at the bend and it carries whatever name you give it.
Where do the road and the gradients come from?
The road is OpenStreetMap’s, as Overture Maps publishes it, traced from Le Bourg-d'Oisans to Alpe d'Huez. 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 730 m and the top to 1,850 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
Alpe d'Huez, 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