Sa Calobra, measured: the 10 km you have to climb to leave

Sa Calobra is the only climb on this island you cannot choose to skip once you have started it. The Ma-2141 runs from the Serra’s spine down to a cove on the north coast and stops there. There is no onward road. You descend 10.0 km to the sea, and then you climb the same 10.0 km back out, or you wait for a boat.

Length

10.0 km

from 15 m at the port to the top of the road

Height gained

708 m

summit minus the lowest point on the road

Average gradient

7.1%

the one figure every source agrees on

Steepest kilometre

8.8%

from km 8.2

The climb, kilometre by kilometre

What makes Sa Calobra unusual is not any single ramp. It is that there is barely a metre of relief anywhere on it. Antonio Parietti laid the road out to hold a near-constant gradient, and the measurement shows he succeeded: of its 10.0 kilometres, the gentlest full kilometre and the steepest are 5.9% and 8.1%. On most climbs of this length that spread is three or four times wider.

Everyone publishes 682 m. Four elevation models say 723 m.

Every source we could find puts the top of this climb at 682 metres: Wikipedia, the climb databases, and OpenStreetMap’s own tag on the pass node. When we sampled Spain’s national terrain model at that exact node it returned 723 m. So we checked it against three other elevation models, and none of them agreed with 682 either.

Before publishing a disagreement this size, the obvious suspicion is that our own method is wrong — that the terrain model is reading a rock face beside the road rather than the road. Two checks say otherwise. Everywhere else the same method lands close: across 35 comparisons on 32 other-sourced summits — 32 against an altitude somebody else published and 3 against this project’s separate measurement from the Mallorca 312 GPX tracks — the median disagreement is 2 m and 32 of them fall inside 10 m. And sampling a 400-metre square around the Coll dels Reis node finds a smooth saddle between 694 m and 746 m — no notch, no cutting, nothing for a terrain model to misread.

So the measurement stands, and the explanation turns out to be dull, which is the best kind. The published figures describe a climb that stops about 600 m short of the top of the road.

How we got this At 9.4 km from the port — the length almost everyone publishes — our series reads 670 m, twelve metres from the 682 m everyone publishes as the summit. The road then climbs for another 600 m to its actual high point at 723 m. Two descriptions of the same road that stop in different places, not two contradictory measurements of the same thing.Computed from Our 10 m elevation series for the Ma-2141, against the 9.4 km / 682 m figures in common circulation.Computed 5 August 2026.

The road

The Ma-2141 was designed by Antonio Parietti, and the two sources we checked put its construction a year apart — opened 1933 and built 1932.

A year apart, and neither source shows its own source. Build and opening are different events, which is the likeliest explanation.

The reason the loop exists at all is arithmetic rather than showmanship: the road had to lose height in a place with no room to lose it, and taking the alignment under itself bought the distance without boring through anything. OpenStreetMap corroborates that much directly — the loop is mapped as a bridge on layer=2, the road passing over its own alignment.

Dangerous Roads adds that the road was cut by hand, moving 31,000 m³ of rock, and was deliberately designed so that no tunnel was needed anywhere on it. The second half of that does not survive contact with the map: OpenStreetMap records a short tunnel on the Ma-2141. It is 28 m long, which is why the profile above says the elevation is interpolated across it — and it is worth holding next to the modern Ma-10, where the Puig Major climb from Sóller runs 409 m of its length underground.

How we got this The measurement flags every way tagged as a tunnel or a bridge and interpolates elevation between the portals. On this climb that flagged one tunnel — the metres are reported on the profile — and several bridges, one of them carrying the road over its own alignment on layer 2, which is the tie knot.Computed from OpenStreetMap way 667742888, tagged tunnel=yes on ref Ma-2141, and our own measured series.Computed 5 August 2026.

Whether you can ride it, and what is changing

Source Consell de Mallorca · checked 5 August 2026

What is new is that this specific road is being wired. 210 cameras — 105 with number-plate readers and vehicle counting, 105 for surveillance — plus 20 sound meters and 32 control zones across the Serra de Tramuntana, for €1 million. The first 64 devices are going in on the Lluc–Sa Calobra road and at the Caimari entrance, and the system is to be fully operational by October 2026.

Source Ultima Hora · checked 5 August 2026Reported 25 July 2026. The stated purposes are illegal racing, noise, and counting vehicles entering from outside Mallorca ahead of a vehicle-entry law still in parliament; the article notes the AI can distinguish vehicle types and detect bicycles.

For a cyclist the relevant part is not enforcement but arithmetic: the stated purpose includes counting the vehicles that enter, ahead of a vehicle-entry law still in parliament. The Lluc–Sa Calobra road is where the counting starts.

Getting there, and getting out

The Ma-2141 leaves the Ma-10 near Escorca and dead-ends at the cove. There is no loop, no alternative descent, and no road along the coast in either direction. Every rider who goes down either comes back up or leaves by sea, and every car and coach that goes down does the same thing on the same two lanes — which is the entire reason this road has been in the island’s traffic politics for a decade.

If you are basing a trip around the Tramuntana rather than staying in it, a hire car is what makes the Serra reachable from Palma; if you would rather wake up at the foot of these roads, Pollença, Sóller and Alcúdia are the three bases that put Sa Calobra inside a morning. Both links are marked, and both pay us if you use them. We have no relationship with any bike-hire company on the island and so have nothing to say about which one to use.

Verified Every figure on this page was re-checked against its source on 5 August 2026. Next review due within 120 days.