Coll de Sóller cycling climb: 25 hairpins in 8.5 km

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This was the main road into the Sóller valley, which made it a working mountain pass and a poor place to ride a bicycle. Then, in February 1997, a tunnel opened underneath it, and the Ma-11A stopped being anybody’s route to anywhere. What is left is 8.5 km of empty road with 25 hairpins on it, more than any of the other 115 climbs we have counted on this island (counting each direction up a pass separately).

Length

8.5 km

from the plaça in Sóller at 34 m to the pass at 497 m

Height gained

463 m

4th largest of 75 published climb-sides

Average gradient

5.5%

steepest kilometre 6.9%, from km 2.8

Hairpins

25

counted from the centreline; 1st of 116 climb-sides

How many hairpins: why three guides give three different counts

Each guide counted in good faith, but nobody has written down what counts as a hairpin, so each count answers a slightly different question. Try counting on the way up and you will see the problem. One guide says as much: “we counted 30 hairpins in total – but the truth is that it’s difficult to keep count!”

We counted with a written rule, on the same OpenStreetMap centreline the gradients are measured along. The road’s bearing is taken every 5 m, turns in the same direction add up into one bend, and a bend ends once the road has turned 25° back the other way. A bend of at least 135° within 150 m of road is a hairpin. The angle separates a switchback from an ordinary corner, and the distance separates it from a road slowly wrapping round a mountain.

By that rule the Sóller side has 25 hairpins. Count every turn of 135° however much road it takes, and it has 30, which is the number Epic Road Rides counted from the saddle. Both are fair counts: the first counts tight switchbacks, the second every big change of direction. The guides disagree because none of them said which of those they were counting.

The first hairpin is at km 2.9 and the last at km 8.2, so all 25 fall inside 5.3 km: 4.7 per kilometre through the middle of the climb. The bottom three kilometres out of the valley are almost straight, and then the road starts turning and keeps turning.

We have counted every measured climb on the island the same way. The twistiest roads on Mallorca ranks all 116 of them, shows where the 135° threshold sits among all the turns we counted, and checks four published hairpin counts against the stretch of road each one describes. Three of the four match.

Traffic: why the old pass road is so quiet

The toll explains the traffic. For two decades the tunnel carried the most expensive toll in Spain. Between 1997 and 2017 the pass was the free alternative to a €5.10 tunnel, so some of the valley’s traffic still came over the top. The barriers came up on 28 December 2017, and since then there has been no reason to drive the pass. As one guide puts it, “There is little traffic (due to the tunnel for cars and coaches).”

Source Epic Road Rides · checked 6 August 2026The same guide adds the qualifier that matters on a descent: “There is not a lot of traffic on the route, but don’t assume there will be none.”

Keep that guide’s warning in mind on the way down: little traffic still means some. The road has 25 blind hairpins and a 10.5% maximum gradient, and a hire car can be coming the other way round any of them.

The one road on this island the traffic map leaves out

The tunnel explains why the pass is empty. The island’s own traffic map shows how unusual that is by leaving the road out altogether.

The Ma-11A is the island's exception. At 10.7 km it is the longest road used by any climb here that has no counting station, and other roads of that length are counted almost without exception, so its missing figure is unusual. Beside it runs the Ma-11, which goes through the mountain instead of over it and counts 16,128 vehicles a day. The through traffic takes the tunnel, so most of what drives over the pass is there by choice.

Even so, no count does not mean no traffic, and nobody publishes a figure for what comes over the pass on an August Sunday. Coverage thins as the roads get smaller: 8% of those 0–3 km, 34% of those 3–6 km, 73% of those 6–12 km, 89% of those 12–25 km, 100% of those over 25 km. On a mountain lane, then, a missing figure tells you about the counting network and nothing about the road. Which roads are counted, and what they carry, is in the road-safety guide.

© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL

What is being done to the surface

Source Ultima Hora · checked 6 August 2026

Thirteen kilometres covers both sides of the pass and a bit more: this climb is 8.5 km and the Bunyola side is 7.6 km. The work was announced in two phases, and you might expect both to be finished by now. The Consell’s own roadmap has it carrying on.

In September 2025 the Consell said the reform of two Serra de Tramuntana roads on its roadmap — the Coll de Sóller and Sa Calobra — would carry on into the following year.

Source Ultima Hora · checked 7 August 2026Reported 3 September 2025: «Para el próximo año está previsto seguir adelante con la reforma de dos carreteras de la Serra de Tramuntana que están dentro del libro de ruta: las del Coll de Sóller y Sa Calobra.» “El próximo año” from a September 2025 report is 2026, which is now. It states an intention and reports no progress, so nothing in it tells you how much of either road is done.

Nothing published since says which of the two phases is finished, so in 2026 expect work somewhere on the road: fresh tarmac on one stretch, cones and a temporary surface on another, and no way to know in advance which is where. Check the Consell’s roads pages before you ride. It takes thirty seconds, and you are about to commit to 8.5 km of descending you cannot see round.

The climb itself

It is a steady climb with an awkward middle. 5.3 km of it sits between 4 and 6% and another 2.2 km between 6 and 8; the hardest kilometre is the third, at 6.9%, and it arrives exactly where the hairpins start. Against the island median of 192 m of gain this is a large climb, 4th of 75, but it is nowhere near the hardest. What you remember afterwards is the corners.

The other side

The two sides of the pass are different climbs. From Bunyola it is 7.6 km at 4.3% for 330 m, with 18 hairpins — fewer, longer, and on a road that keeps more of the view south towards Palma. Ridden as a loop out of Sóller, take this side up: it holds 7 more hairpins than the other one, and hairpins are worth more climbing than descending. The Bunyola side has its own page.

Why other guides give a shorter climb

Temperature at the top, and what the way down feels like

The old pass is the shaded one, and the valley under it keeps the sun off until late in the morning. Every figure here is measured under an open sky, so on this road the early rows run warm: expect it to feel cooler than they say.

You finish this climb 463 m above where you started it, and it is colder up there. In January, the coldest month at this top, the foot of the climb averages 14.2 °C around 12:00 while the top averages 10.3 °C. That is a different set of clothes at each end: 3.9 °C bought with 463 m of climbing. In July the same top sits at 27.4 °C.

Then you turn round. Going down at 30–50 km/h you make your own wind, and at 08:00 in January the air at this top — 6.1 °C standing still — feels like 1.5 °C at the slower speed and 0.2 °C at the faster one. By 12:00 the air at this top is too warm for the wind chill index to apply, in every month of the year, so a cold descent here is an early-morning problem. Whatever you would wear on the way up, the way down is the reason the gilet is in the pocket.

The temperatures are read by height between two thermometers 1,007 m apart, so a top on the north coast gets a figure measured elsewhere on the island. They are also open-sky readings: where the mountain shades the road, the morning will be colder than the table. What the temperatures do across the whole island, and what to put in the pocket, is on the kit guide.

Riding it

The obvious ride is the loop: out of Sóller over the pass, down to Bunyola, and back through the tunnel. But the tunnel is no place for a bicycle, so in practice the loop is up one side and back over the other, or out to Palma the long way. The other obvious ride is the pairing this valley is famous for: this pass and Puig Major from Sóller, which leaves the same square and is the exact opposite road — 15.4 km with 4 hairpins on it.

Stay in the valley and both are on your doorstep before the coaches are awake: Sóller itself, or Port de Sóller two kilometres down the valley. From the south side, Bunyola sits at the foot of the other ascent, on the Palma side of the mountain.

Verified Every figure on this page was re-checked against its source on 6 August 2026. Next review due within 120 days.

This climb’s road is shut

The Consell de Mallorca has works on the Ma-11, and the stretch it names runs across ground this climb covers.

• Closed — The Ma-11 is closed to through traffic, for maintenance. Until 19 November 2026 · Overnight, 22:00–06:00 Where: km 17–28

  Source Ma-11 — IDEmallorca — Consell de Mallorca · checked 18 October 2026Ma-11 carries at least 26% of this climb, and the stretch on the register overlaps the ground the climb covers by at least 1,852 m.TÚNEL DE SÓLLER TANCAT AMB DESVIAMENT PER MA-11A (COLL DE SÓLLER), de 22:00 a 06:00 hores de diumenge a dijous en les dates indicades, per tasques de manteniment

Works get lifted early and extended late. Before a ride that depends on one of these, the authority’s own viewer carries the current picture. Consell de Mallorca — road incidents viewer. What’s shut on Mallorca’s roads