THE BIG RIDE
Mapped by
Roadto
Ruin
WORDS NICK BUSCA PHOTOGRAPHY JUAN MANUEL SALAZAR
Colombia’s Alto de Letras, at 81km, is one of the world’s longest cycling climbs. Nick Busca settles in for the long haul…
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elatedly, at the 45km mark, the mountain knocked at my door. I was 2,500m above sea level, but still, in distance terms, a little over halfway from the summit. This was no courtesy call, either. Colombia’s Alto de Letras was inflicting its first strike on my body and soul. Up until this point, my progression on what is one of the longest cycling climbs on Earth had unfolded serenely. Suspiciously so. From the base town of Mariquita (at 495m above sea level) to Padua (2,100m), it took two hours and 20 minutes, no great shakes for someone like me who’d grown up in the Alps. It was a good point to take a coffee break and split the ride in half, realising that even if I stopped now it would still count as the longest climb I’d ever done in my life. Sometimes it’s only when you get off the bike and dare to walk that you realise how tired you are. And I was surely tired. My quads and hips were stiffer than I’d ever experienced. I stretched them, in between sipping some dark, bitter coffee and swallowing mouthfuls of pandebono, the local
cheesebread. The refreshments revived both energy and morale, but for how long? This climb had plenty of legs in it, but did I? Both gradient and altitude were still relatively modest, but already I was feeling oxygen deprived, each pedal stroke feeling a little off. To pass through this first, small crisis, I needed to respect the mountain and the challenge that lay ahead.
Testing times
The Alto de Letras (translated, it means the High of the Letters) rises grandiosely in the central chain of the Colombian Andes. For a long time, the road grinding up to the 3,766m height of the pass had been shrouded in mystery. Only word-ofmouth from the pioneers and adventurous cyclists who had climbed the monster could provide a record of its wild environment and the strenuous challenge it offered. But the development of new technology (read: Strava) and the opening up of the country to tourists after the ‘bad years’ (which ended around 2003/2004), when personal security was fraught with danger, has made this remote corner of east Colombia more approachable and less intimidating.
CYCLING PLUS | July 2019 | 151