If you think the Vallter 2000 sounds like rollercoaster in a 1980s theme park, you’d be half right
Words Nick Christian Photography Patrik Lundin
Need a clue as to the Vallter 2000’s location? Say it like a long-pole track and field athlete.
Still struggling? You will definitely get there if you’re a fan of the first Spanish WorldTour race of the season.
Only don’t call this climb Spanish.
Sure, it’s in Spain, but to anyone local the Vallter is categorically in Catalunya.
Its name is Catalan for ‘valley’ after all. Said valley is in fact the Parc Natural de les Capçaleres del Ter i el Freser – obviously – and as a landscape it is gallery-worthy.
But this isn’t the Catalunya of Dalí or Picasso.
Set high in the Pyrenees less than a mile from the French frontier, here is the work of a pair of creatives that spans millennia, the rivers Ter and Freser, who inch by glacially slow inch have sculpted this terrain into being.
High anticipation
Despite making its debut in the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya back in 1986 (this is the first Spanish WorldTour race of the season, in case you were wondering), it is only in the last decade that the Vallter 2000 has found its way into regular rotation.
The Andalusian, Juan Fernández, was first to break the tape in 1986; Swiss roller Tony Rominger did it next in 1992.
It then took more than 20 years for the Volta to return to this northern outcrop, but since then it has never really left, visiting every other year since 2013.
For the trivia lovers out there, Adam Yates remains the only rider to have taken more than a single victory on this climb, and there are bonus points for knowing that last year he, along with Primož Roglič and Remco Evenepoel, was denied by Giulio Ciccone.
Remco still took the KoM that day – one among the 62 pages of Strava trophies kept in the Belgian’s virtual cabinet.
Whether or not it mattered much to him one can only guess, but the local tourist board was evidently delighted, granting real-life road rights over the segment’s start and finish lines: just outside the village of Setcases lies a band of tangelo-painted tarmac inscribed with the words ‘Strava start segment’.
As your computer bleeps in unison with the start, you realise you’re already at 1,300m elevation.
Make the most of the plentiful oxygen ‘down here’ because you have only about 2.5km before you hit 1,500m, or what atmospheric scientists call the zone of ‘high altitude’.
Don’t expect this first stretch to be easy, but with the gradient remaining well below 10% you shouldn’t find yourself struggling.
The road, now only just wide enough for two vehicles travelling in opposite directions to not touch mirrors, snakes gently round to the northwest.
There are no tight turns but nor is it straight enough to frustrate.
You’ll feel you’re making progress as the view over your handlebars changes rewardingly with every stroke.
The surface is pale and imperfect, but it is not sufficiently scarred as to be uncomfortable.
Getting closer
By the mid-climb squiggle the walls haven’t literally closed in, but this is where the flora is at its most dense, drawing the darkness near.
The road pitches up towards the teens before you even hit the hairpins, which enable the route to negotiate a near sheer wall of slate.
As it rises, the road narrows even more to seem steeper than it really is.
Keep your eyes peeled for cattle and give them as wide a berth as possible.
Ranging somewhat freely, the longhorns are herded to higher, cooler ground during the summer months before being brought back down in early October.
The arrhythmic clunk of their bells warns rather than encourages your progress.
These five switchbacks will eat the better part of 300m out of the remaining elevation.
As you rise above the treeline and the gradient relents, you would feel freer to breathe were it not for how noticeably thinner the air feels. You’re more than halfway there.
The valley has opened out like the pages of an ancient atlas.
Pins aplenty
Mammals are fewer and further between at this altitude – you’re more likely to spot an imaginatively named Pyrenean rock lizard sunning itself on the limestone crag.
Take advantage of the next two kilometres of relaxed incline – at times falling below 2% – to invest more in easily spinning legs than heaving lungs.
The road steepens gradually before you reach the first of six car parks and, of rather more interest, the second set of hairpins poised to take you to the top.
Eleven in all, each hairpin is labelled with the name of a different WorldTour race.
All the Grand Tours are there, along with every Monument except one.
Quite why Milan-San Remo has been denied a bend is a mystery, but both Strade Bianche and the San Sebastian Classic make the cut ahead of La Primavera.
At Il Lombardia you pass a large circle with an H in the middle, a reminder of the Vallter 2000’s altitude.
The final bend, less a switchback than a fast right-hander, comes after 400 give-it-everything metres and is named in honour of – what else – the Volta a Catalunya.
Your arrival, into another car park, is inauspicious, but it’s about the journey not the destination.
Take a look back down the mountain; the Vallter 2000 is truly the work of a master.
Climb info
Vallter 2000
Start Setcases
Recommended hotel Hotel Grevol hotelgrevol.com
Pre-ride cafe Can Prodon Cafe
Bike shop Lin Bike Olot
Bidon refill Cafteria Vallter 2000
More information catalunya.com
The stats
Vallter 2000
Distance 11.2km
Summit height 2,143m
Altitude gain 843m
Average gradient 7.6%
Maximum gradient 11.6%
Current best Strava time
KoM Remco Evenepoel (pro), Belgium, 29min 36sec
QoM Brodie Chapman (pro), Australia, 39min 15sec
