Puig Major cycling climb from Sóller: 15.4 km, 848 m

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Two roads climb out of Sóller and they are opposites. One turns back on itself 25 times in eight kilometres. The other is this: fifteen and a half kilometres of Ma-10 that almost never stops going up and almost never turns round, gaining 848 m — more than any other climb on this island — and finishing at a hole in the rock at 873 m, because the summit half a kilometre above it is a radar station and has been since the 1950s.

Length

15.4 km

from 25 m on the valley floor to the Túnel de Monnàber

Height gained

848 m

the largest of all 75 published climb-sides on the island

Average gradient

5.5%

flattered by a flat first kilometre and a dip at 9.0 km

Steepest kilometre

7.2%

from km 12.9, near the top

The longest steady gradient on Mallorca

The island median is 192 m of height gain. This climb takes 848 m, which is 4.4 times the median climb and more than Sa Calobra, and it does it without ever getting properly steep: the steepest kilometre is 7.2%, which ranks 35th of 75. Instead it has 9.4 km between 6 and 8% — 61% of the whole climb in a single band. Nothing else on Mallorca holds one gradient for that long.

For a rider the climb comes in three parts. The first kilometre is the town and the valley floor and does not count. From km 2 to km 9 the road climbs steadily at 5–7% through Fornalutx’s terraces. Then it gives some of it back — the kilometre from 9 to 10 is the only real rest on the climb, and 0.9 km of the ascent is downhill — and the last five kilometres are the hardest of all. The steepest kilometre on the climb is the one starting at km 12.9, so the hardest part comes when the road is already 680 m above the foot.

Four hairpins in fifteen kilometres

Every road up the Serra is described as hairpinned, and this one is not. We counted the bends on all 116 measured climbs on the island, counting each direction up a pass separately, from the same road centreline the gradients come from, under one published rule — a turn of at least 135° taken inside 150 m of road. Puig Major from Sóller has 4. The Coll de Sóller, which starts in the same town square, has 25 in barely half the distance.

That count tells you what kind of road this is: an engineered mountain road built to a steady gradient, with very few switchbacks. You can ride the whole thing seated and in a rhythm. On the way down the danger is speed, because there are few corners tight enough to slow you.

For the other end of that scale, the twistiest roads on Mallorca ranks all 116 counted climbs by the same rule.

409 m of the climb are underground

The Ma-10 goes through the mountain rather than over it, more than once, and the last of those holes is the top of the climb: the Túnel de Monnàber, the highest point a bicycle can legally reach on this island. 409 m of the 15.4 km — 2.7% of the climb — is inside rock.

Riding into an unlit tunnel out of Mediterranean glare is the one real hazard on the ascent, and the reason to carry a rear light in your jersey pocket here, even in summer. A terrain model cannot show what the tunnels are like on the day you ride: the lighting, the surface, or whether any work is going on.

Why the road stops below the summit: the air force radar station

The climb ends at 873 m and the mountain goes on for another 565 m above it. A road does go up those last metres, because that is how the equipment got there, but it is not open. The Spanish air force’s 7th Air Surveillance Squadron has held the summit since the 1950s.

Source Ejército del Aire y del Espacio · checked 25 September 2026

The mountain’s published height is 1,445 m, but it is no longer that high. 9 metres of the summit were removed in 1958 to seat the station, and the figure most guides still print is the one from before that happened.

That makes the summit the one place in the Serra de Tramuntana that was rebuilt to a specification.

Why other guides give a shorter climb

We start climbs at the town they are ridden from, because that is where a rider starts; most guides start them where the gradient does. The difference is the flat run out of Sóller, and you can check it: Take the last 13.9 km of our own series and it climbs 827 m at 6.0% — against the 13.9 km at 6.2% Ultima Hora publishes.

How we got this The published length is subtracted from ours, the elevation at that point read off our own series, and the gradient recomputed over the same distance. No other adjustment is made: where the climb starts is the only difference between the two.Computed from our measured elevation series for Puig Major from Sóller, and Ultima Hora’s published figures.Computed 7 August 2026.

Use whichever suits what you are doing. For comparing this climb with the other 74 on the atlas, use ours: they were all measured the same way, so the numbers compare fairly. When you talk to somebody about Puig Major, use theirs, because that is the figure they will know.

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

This is the highest point a bicycle can legally reach on Mallorca, and the coldest place on the island to turn round. Of every top in these records, only Puig Major, Coll dels Reis and Coll de sa Batalla read below freezing on an early descent — and this one is the coldest of them.

You finish this climb 848 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 14.3 °C around 12:00 while the top averages 7.2 °C. That is a different set of clothes at each end: 7.1 °C bought with 848 m of climbing. In July the same top sits at 25.2 °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 — 4.9 °C standing still — feels like -0.1 °C at the slower speed and -1.5 °C at the faster one. Ride it at 12:00 instead and the same descent feels like 1.7 °C to 2.9 °C. Midday here is cold enough for wind chill to count in four months of the twelve. 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.

How much traffic this road carries

The road up here is the Ma-10, and it is the through route for the whole northern half of the Tramuntana: every car crossing the range between Andratx and Pollença is on it somewhere. Even so, its count is one of the quieter ones on the scale shown here. The road’s reputation comes from its edges and its drops much more than from its traffic.

Most of this climb is on the Ma-10 — at least 87% of its 15.4 km. The Consell de Mallorca counts 8,217 motor vehicles a day on that road. Across eight counting points its quietest reads 5,930 a day and its busiest 11,189, so that figure is the average for the whole road, and the stretch you climb may carry more or less.

Of the 16 roads the island's measured climbs run on, four carry more. It carries 14 of the climbs measured here, so that one figure is the traffic behind all of them. For the scale: the busiest of them, the Ma-15, counts 27,013 a day.

A daily average smooths a whole year, so a February Tuesday and an August Sunday are one number here; ride early and you are riding under it. It counts motor vehicles only, so there is no count of cyclists. What these figures do to the risk per kilometre driven, road by road, is on the road-safety guide.

Riding it

Three municipalities, one road, and no shortcut off it: Sóller, then Fornalutx, then Escorca at the south tunnel mouth. Fill your bottles at the bottom. 6 places on this climb can fill one and 5 of them are inside the first 1.5 km; the last of all of them is Mirador de ses Barques at km 7.4, and after it there is 7.6 km with nothing at all. There is no public tap for 14.9 km of the ascent, and nothing at the top but a tunnel. Over the far side the road runs past the Gorg Blau and Cúber reservoirs to Lluc; back the way you came is 15.4 km of descent into the valley you started in.

The two obvious rides that use it are the Sóller loop — up the Ma-10, down to Lluc, back over the Coll de Sóller — and the traverse of the whole Serra, which takes the same road in the other direction from Pollença.

Sleep at the bottom of it and the climb is a warm-up rather than a day out: Sóller puts you in the valley itself, and Port de Sóller two flat kilometres further out. If you are coming from Palma for the day, a hire car and the tunnel underneath this mountain will get you to the start in about forty minutes.

Verified Every figure on this page was re-checked against its source on 25 September 2026. Next review due within 120 days.