Alto de las Torres cycling climb profile
Alto de las Torres is an HC climb in Colombia, and the headline number explains why: 28.9 km at an average gradient of 5.44%. That is not brutally steep on paper, but the difficulty comes from duration and elevation gain. The road starts at 1781 m and tops out at 3352 m, with 1571 m of net elevation gain from bottom to summit.
This is the kind of climb where the average gradient can slightly understate the workload. A 5.44% average over 28.9 km means there is very little room to recover if the road keeps trending uphill. The maximum gradient of 9.13% also tells you the climb is not defined by savage walls, but by sustained pressure. The hardest moments are likely to come when those steeper pitches interrupt an effort that already feels settled.
How the gradient should be read
With only the full-climb statistics, the safest way to understand Alto de las Torres is as a long aerobic climb with selective ramps rather than a short, explosive test. The max gradient of 9.13% is steep enough to punish poor gearing or impatient pacing, but not so extreme that it changes the whole character of the climb.
That matters tactically. On a climb this long, the mistake is not usually losing time on one steep pitch. It is riding the early kilometres as if the average gradient makes the climb manageable, then paying for that decision as the elevation gain accumulates. The 1557 m of total ascent means the work is substantial even before accounting for how the upper part of the climb may feel at 3352 m.
Pacing notes
Treat the opening as controlled climbing, not as an invitation to settle into an optimistic rhythm. If you ride by /glossary/ftp, the right approach is to stay comfortably below a maximal sustainable effort early, then reassess once the climb has clearly settled into its final phase.
The key is to preserve cadence and avoid muscular loading too soon. Because the maximum gradient is 9.13%, you should expect moments where the same power produces a noticeably lower speed. Do not chase speed there. Hold effort, shift early, and let the gradient pass without turning it into a match-burning surge.
Gearing notes
Bring a genuine climbing gear. Alto de las Torres does not demand a setup built only for extreme gradients, but 28.9 km of climbing makes any over-geared choice expensive. If your cadence drops every time the road tilts toward its steeper pitches, the climb becomes a strength-endurance grind long before the summit.
The best setup is one that lets you keep pressure smooth through the 5.44% average while still having a bailout gear for the 9.13% maximum. That is the practical lesson of this profile: respect the length first, the steepness second. Riders who keep the effort boring early are the ones most likely to still be riding efficiently near 3352 m.