gyorgyigabor

Hello !
More than a month ago I cycled the World's hardest climb.
Mauna Kea is the most difficult road bike cycling climb of the World based on the data of salite.ch and climbbybike.com, the two most serious cycling climbs's collections. It's an epic climb, a monster !
Mauna Kea has 2 ascents: the Hilo side is harder than the Kona side ! Both starts by the Pacific Ocean (Big island, Hawaii) and ends just at the top of the 4205 m high peak. The 1st 50 km long section is not too hard: the average steepness is below 5% (for more than 2000 m heightdifference), but the last 20 kms has 2000 m heightdifference that means 10% steepness; the maximum grade is 17-20%. Other difficulty is the thin air above ca. 3300-3500 m (at the top there is 40% less oxygen than by the ocean) and a 7 km long gravel-sandy section above 2800 m.
At last there is another thing to made it tough: there is only one place to get water, buy some snack, drink: the Visitor Center after ca. 55 kms at the height of 2800 m. That's why that when I left the ocean, at sunrise I carried ca. 5 liters of water.
In the last hour of the daylight several cars go up to the summit to enjoy the sunset.
Because I cycled all of the paved climbs finishing above 2000m in the Alps, Pyrenées and Canary islands and cycled up to Pico Veleta, I had to say that it is really the toughest cycling climb of the Earth; it was harder than any other climbs that I cycled before, much harder than Monte Zoncolan, Grosser Oscheniksee, Speikkogel, etc.
Have pleasure with it !
Gábor

chaadster

Nice!

goenrdoug

fantastic! great job!

bleui

epic effort! did you descend that beast in the dark?
long climb in quite a remote area is too scary for me

datlas 

Kudos!

Laurido92

Wow! Awesome climb and video.

exmechanic89

Zoiks! That's a serious climb..

Bostic

Congrats on the accomplishment! I enjoyed watching the video, such an epic location. This climb is on my bucket list after climbing Haleakala four years ago. So much more planning though with the dirt section and an extra 3000' of climbing. Also I wouldn't be riding back down to the start.

What gearing did you use?

Midwest Ullrich

Amazing! Thanks for sharing.

cthenn

"Because I cycled all of the paved climbs finishing above 2000m in the Alps, Pyrenées and Canary islands and cycled up to Pico Veleta, I had to say that it is really the toughest cycling climb of the Earth; it was harder than any other climbs that I cycled before, much harder than Monte Zoncolan, Grosser Oscheniksee, Speikkogel, etc."

Let me just say

Well done sir. You are a gentleman and a scholar.

Wested

I think the hill in Central Park is something like that.

Ilbiker

Wow! Awesome video and climb.

gyorgyigabor

Thanky (for the others too!)

I had fortune (after I had unfortune): I lost my passport and wallet by teh Visitor center, so I wanted to go back not much after reaching the summit to ask the owner / assistant there if they found... when I made video there a ranger asked me whether I had problem.... if he should help. Then I asked him if he could take me down to the Visitor Center (because in the dark on that dirtroad that could be dangerous (although I had lights)) and he could take me down there
I gave there my data, email address and few hours later I got the message that they found the passport and wallet).
From the Visitor Center I descended (in dark - of course) and under 2000m - in rain. At about 9-10 pm. it was hard to remain awake.

gyorgyigabor

Thanks very much
Yes, I know that this climb is on several cyclists' bucket list.
I will write a much longer travelogue, then I will share that too. My gears were 28-38-48 at front and max. 34 at the back. It was Ok, but because of the headwind I got above 3300 m, when I cycled above ca. 3600 m sometimes I was able to cycle only 4-5 mins continuously and had to stop for few dozen seconds. Such happened ca. 3 times. There sometimes it was very hard, but I didn't feel bad, weak. It is said that above ca. 3500 m ca. 6-7 % steepness is as hard as ca. 10%, so 10-12% feels much harder. Tires: it was Schwalbe marathon, not so terrain tire, but it was just Ok. After short stops ca. 2-3 times I had to walk few steps right of left to find better place to be able to start and than I could ride again. Usually the bends are steeper than other stections.

gyorgyigabor

Thanks
Here is a list of my higher climbs, but unfortunately it wasn't updated in the last 3 years (I had to do that), but contain a lot of climbs (several times with my video urls)
Kerékpárral leküzdött emelkedok listája (2000 m+)- passes, cols, (2000 m +): Galibier, Izoard, Iseran, Sustenpass, Gottardo, Gotthard, Splügenpass, Mortirolo, Vars, Lautaret, Croix de Fer, Fauniera, Nivolet, etc...
The picture also doesn't show all of them, but ca. 90% of the high alpine paved roads of the Alps (I usually cycle paved roads (98%) and very rarely unpaved ones)

jfh

Wow, that's a great video and a seriously impressive portfolio of rides. Your web page is great motivation for me to plan a trip to Europe for some climbing. I hope you enjoyed your trip to the USA, and post more about your experience in Colorado as well.

Jofu

Very cool stuff, thanks for the video!


Geoff

Dan333SP

Jeez. How do you have the time to do all of these rides? You've done more climbing than I could do in 10 lifetimes, I think. Very impressive, gonna watch the Hawaii video later, looking forward to it.

ZMC888

Kudos! I've done an 'Everesting' (took me 20 hours) so I have an idea of what it takes to do this. Cool to have Strava max climb:4205 meters, my current is 480 meters!

sh00k

I literally LOL'd. I think that hill is totally crazier than this

gyorgyigabor

Thank you, jfh,
I can help you if you plan a trip in the Alps or Pyrenees, or Croatia, Slovakia, Slovenia.
Yes, I liked cycling in the Rockies (sometimes I felt really like in the "wild-wild West" ) and Hawaii too. I enjoyed the typical western-movie houses somewhere and the thing that the mountains were not like in Wurope: wider mountains, wider valleys.... , maybe taller trees and everywhere warnings because of the bears

Oh, I forgot to share that I've already wrote an "article" about my experiences (1st part): in English:
Györgyi Gábor: Preparing for the bicycle tour in the Rocky mountains and on Hawaii, on the hardest climb of the World

2nd part will be written in 1-2 weeks time.

gyorgyigabor

Thanks Dan,
I increased / rose the "quality" of difficulty of the bicycle tours in 2004, when I first cycled in the French Alps and I fell in love with that. Since 2004 every year I cycled 2-3-4 weeks (if 4 weeks that in 2 parts) in the Alps or Pyrenees.
Thanks for your interest of / about (?) the following video(s). I will share that / them.

An average tour is like this:


or:

or in the Pyrenees:

gyorgyigabor

Congratulations for that! In 20 hours an EVeresting is very great! (I'm not such a cyclists who can cycle so much with not enough stops, when I cycled 7200 m heightdiff. than that took me about 21 hours. Other occasion: Brenta-Ortles challenge strong version: with 345 kms + 8998 m took me for ca. 30-32 hours but that time I don't have to huppy and I got rain and was cold in the last few hours....)
Usually I cycle serious climbs, but few years ago I did a challenge in Hungary (my homeland), when I cycled 52 times a steep climb (heightdiff was 120 meters, but it had 12-14% steep section).