Route 09 · Berguedà · Pre-Pyrenees
Coll de Pal from Bagà
Nineteen kilometres, 1,288 metres of climbing, a dead end at 2,100 metres.
- Round trip
- 290 km
- Driving time
- 4 h 30
- Roads
- C-16 · BV-4024
- High point
- Coll de Pal, 2,106 m
- Best season
- Late May to October; the road closes with snow
- Difficulty
- Demanding
Why it makes the list
- A single-purpose road: one village at the bottom, one pass at the top, nothing in between
- Gradients up to 13 % and the whole Cadí-Moixeró range across the valley
- Empty on weekdays; a cycling pilgrimage on weekends
The BV-4024 exists to reach a small ski station and, for most of the year, reaches nothing at all. It leaves Bagà at 816 m and climbs 19.3 km to the Coll de Pal at 2,106 m, an average of 6.8 % with sections at 12 and 13 %. It is one of the hardest climbs in Catalan cycling and, on a weekday, one of the emptiest roads you will drive.
Bagà is 130 km up the C-16 from Barcelona, past Berga, about an hour and forty minutes. The town has a walled medieval centre worth a walk before the climb. The road starts in forest, comes out above the trees at around kilometre 10 and finishes across open mountainside with the Cadí-Moixeró range filling the windscreen.
At the pass the tarmac continues to the ski station at kilometre 21 and then becomes a track towards La Molina. Turn around. The descent is the same road with a different view and demands more of the brakes than the climb did of the engine; the ceramic discs on the Turbo S do not fade, but drive it in a low gear anyway.
Combine it with the Collada de Toses for a two-pass day, or with lunch back in Bagà and an easy run home on the C-16. Check that the road is open outside summer.
Stops, in order
- 1. Bagà old town
- 2. Coll de Pal summit
- 3. Bagà for lunch
