Best Bike Climbs in Gran Canaria

Gran Canaria
A playground for pro cyclists.

About the Island

Gran Canaria is a playground for world tour pros. With its challenging rides, perfect weather, and proximity to Europe, it's no surprise that pro cycling teams have winter training camps here. (During our week in December 2024 we saw riders from Uno-X, AG2R, Jayco-Alula, Lotto-DSTNY, Arkea, Bora-Hansgrohe, Israel Premier-Tech, Lidl-Trek, Corratec-Vini Fantini, and dozens of other continental and regional pro teams). The roads here are so challenging that creating a route with under 2,000m of climbing is difficult. So if you’re going to ride here, make sure you’re in shape!

We ran into a bit of a problem when adding climbs for this island, because everything could be considered a climb. There are almost no flat roads on the entire island. Additionally, you could turn every climb into Pico de Nieves if you just kept going up to the top.

The subjectively hardest climb on the island, the Valley of the Tears

They call Gran Canaria the “miniature continent” due to all the different landscapes you can find on an island less than half the size of Rhode Island. On the south and west side of the island it’ll feel like you’re cycling through the Grand Canyon. The north side is lush, green, and tropical. At higher elevations in the center of the island are forests of beautiful Canarian pines, found nowhere else in the world.

The many different riding environments of a 600 sq. mi island

Canarian Pines blanket the island at higher elevations.

Sunset through the pines and clouds at Pico de Nieves

Where to stay

Most people will stay in Maspalomas on the south side of the island, but we recommend staying in the middle of the island. We stayed at the Parador Cruz de Tejeda, at the top of one of the higher mountain passes on the island and only a few miles away from Pico de Nieves.

Staying at the top is good for a few reasons:

1. Accessibility. You can see the entire island without doing any “monster” rides. For example, if you stay in Maspalomas and want to ride to Teror, expect about 15,000ft of climbing. If you stay in the middle, you can drop down to Maspalomas, Valley of the Tears, Aguimes, or anywhere else and climb back up still having a “reasonable” amount of climbing (5-10,000ft). We like this because you get to see more of the island and save energy to stay able to ride every day.
2. It’s a unique experience to start out with a descent and then climb back up to your hotel. In most situations we don’t prefer doing the descent first, but it was fun to do it here and it allowed us to do full loop rides every day and no out-and-backs.

Our Strava heatmap from 8 rides on the island, all of them “easy” (relatively),

with none of them breaking 10,000ft climbed.

We highly recommend our hotel. It was a great place to stay with fantastic food, accommodations, a spa straight out of a travel magazine, and the sunsets from the rooms were breathtaking. Good alternatives are the Hotel Rural El Refugio hotel across the street, or staying in the nearby mountain towns of Artenara, Tejeda, Ayacata, or San Bartolomé de Tirajana - you can’t really go wrong.

Our hotel room view from the Parador Cruz de Tejeda

Best climbs on Gran Canaria

1. The Valley of the Tears

If you’ve travelled to this island, this is a must-do. While on paper it doesn’t look too difficult (a deceptive ranking of 5th hardest at 28.5 PDI), this is widely agreed to be the hardest climb on the island.

2. Pico de Nieves

The beautiful views from the top of Pico de Nieves rival anything we’ve ever seen. The silent, peaceful, perfectly smooth roads leading to the highest point on the island make this ride seem to transcend reality. The most popular route is from Maspalomas, but you can do this climb starting from anywhere on the entire island.

Catch one of the most beautiful sunsets in the world above the clouds at Pico de Nieves.

3. Tauro Pass

The amazing hairpins along the road from Mogàn to Pico de Nieves are not to be missed. This ride leads through the small mountain town of Ayacata which has a cycling themed cafe.

4. Soria

A peaceful, quiet climb easily done from Maspalomas. It connects with Tauro Pass road just above the hairpins, and is one of the more popular climbs on the island.

5. Cruz de Tejeda

A true mountain pass that will make you feel like you crossed a Col in the alps. Facing west, the sunsets from this climb are perhaps the best on the island. There are two options up from Tejeda, an easy one and a steep one!

Travel Tips

• Every now and then, dust from the Sahara desert will blow in from across the ocean and make the air quality very, very bad. While we had excellent weather all week, the second to last day there was a dust storm, shortening our ride to less than an hour and leaving us coughing the rest of the afternoon. The winds kept blowing, and our last day was clear enough to ride all day again.

Before and after the dust storm

• There aren’t a lot of water stops around the island, so plan your rides accordingly. There are plenty of cafes where you can buy snacks, water, coffee and other refreshments, but many operate on unconventional hours, so make sure they’re open when you pass by.

• There is often a food/drink truck at the top of the Tauro Pass climb.

• Your highest likelihood to run into world tour pros are December - February; these are the most popular cycling tourism months as well. Over the course of one week, we ran into at least one rider from 8 different world tour teams (listed above), and dozens of other continental pro and development teams.