The Climb Print
Col du Tourmalet, hairpin by hairpin.
The east side of the Col du Tourmalet, set among the contours of the Hautes-Pyrénées: 17.0 km of the D918 from Sainte-Marie-de-Campan to the col, climbing 1,260 metres at an average of 7.4%.
From £19.95 unframed, £59.95 framed · Your own time on it, if you like.
What the print holds
Col du Tourmalet on paper
The foot of the climb is at the top right of the map: Sainte-Marie-de-Campan, 855 m up, where the D935 meets the D918. The road leaves it heading south up the valley, then swings west and climbs towards the bottom left corner of the sheet. That corner holds the col, at 2,115 m, and the road's final bends are folded in just below it.
The village at the foot has a story of its own. In 1913 Eugène Christophe broke his fork on the descent of the Tourmalet and mended it himself at the forge in Sainte-Marie-de-Campan, and he was penalised because a boy had worked the bellows.
The profile opens with four easy kilometres: 4.3, 3.9, 2.4 and 3.2%. The third is the gentlest on the whole climb, and the one block shaded for under 3%. At the fifth the gradient jumps to 8.7%, and from there to the col no kilometre drops below 7.5%; the middle of the climb reads 8.7, 7.5, 8.0, 7.9, 9.6, 8.0 and 9.0%. On the way up the east side passes Gripp and Artigues, then comes to the La Mongie ski resort at about 12.5 km, with avalanche galleries below it.
That is where the steepest kilometre falls. The thirteenth, the one in which the road reaches La Mongie, climbs at 11.9%, and its figure is the one printed in bold; it falls a tenth of a point short of the top shade on the key, 12+. After it the last four kilometres hold close together at 8.1, 8.3, 8.9 and 8.6%, and the profile runs out at the col.
Five figures close the print beneath the profile: 17.0 km long, 1,260 m gained, 7.4% on average, the steepest kilometre given as 13 at 11.9%, and the col at 2,115 m.
Col du Tourmalet, kilometre by kilometre
The gradient of every kilometre, as the profile on the print colours it: 17.0 km, 1,260 m gained, 7.4% on average, the steepest kilometre the thirteenth at 11.9%.
- 14.3%
- 23.9%
- 32.4%
- 43.2%
- 58.7%
- 68.7%
- 77.5%
- 88.0%
- 97.9%
- 109.6%
- 118.0%
- 129.0%
- 1311.9%
- 148.1%
- 158.3%
- 168.9%
- 17954 m8.6%
Three ways to draw Col du Tourmalet
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.
Col du Tourmalet climb print: the questions
Is this the climb from Luz-Saint-Sauveur?
No. This page is the east side, from Sainte-Marie-de-Campan. The climb from Luz-Saint-Sauveur comes up the west side, the other way up to the same col, and is about 19 km long.
Is Le Géant du Tourmalet on the print?
Le Géant du Tourmalet is a statue of Octave Lapize by Jean-Bernard Métais, put up at the col every June and taken down for the winter. Lapize was first over the Tourmalet in 1910, the year the Tour de France first crossed it. The statue is not drawn, since the print keeps to the road and the mountain under it, but you can mark its place on the col with a named point of your own.
When is the road open?
Roughly from June to November, depending on the snow. Outside that season the way over the col is shut, so a ride up the east side is a summer and autumn plan.
Where do the road and the gradients come from?
The road is OpenStreetMap’s, as Overture Maps publishes it, traced from Sainte-Marie-de-Campan to Col du Tourmalet. 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 855 m and the top to 2,115 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
Col du Tourmalet, 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