When we discuss toughest climbs in racing, we tend to think primarily of the Grand Tours, and with good reason. Short stage racing seldom sees climbs as brutally tough as Angliru or Monte Zoncolan, and often with good reason; a climb like this in a short stage race would often result in the race becoming a win-the-MTF-win-the-race kind of easy GC win for the strongest climber, as tactics are hard to enforce on a summit so difficult no real racing will go on outside of the final climb (yes, I know both have been won from the break recently, but only in races where the GC battle was either waged behind GC irrelevances (Vuelta '13) or where the GC was more or less settled (Giro '14)). Nevertheless, a one week stage race has climbed the Rettenbachferner. Twice. While Germany was still in love with cycling, the Deutschlandtour sought to expand in to Austria to take advantage of more epic Alpine climbs; while strong summit finishes were possible in Germany, as evidenced by the Feldberg climb used in 2003 and 2005, a lot of the time the smaller mountain ranges led to a range of medium mountain type stages, and so from 2004 onwards the organisers looked to their neighbours to the south to take advantage of more difficult mountain passes. In 2005, that led to the introduction of this savage and brutal climb, which was also revisited in 2007.
Revisit 2005's ascent here and see Levi Leipheimer attack (a rare collector's item!) to defeat Jörg Jaksche, Georg Totschnig and Jan Ullrich. It makes me miss the Deutschlandtour; a race I truly wish could come back... there are so many possibilities for it, from savage cobbled stages in Sachsen-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Ardennes-esque monsters in the Rheinland, and around the Taunus and Aschaffenburg, sawtoothed medium mountain killers in eastern Bavaria, Thüringen, the Rhön and Erzgebirge, echelons of climbers' nightmares in Schleswig-Holstein and the Nordseeküste, and mountains to rival all but the Alpine and Pyrenean peaks in the Schwarzwald and German Alps. But that's off topic.
The climb was an instant attention-grabber. Maybe that's to do with the combination of high altitude and nightmarish gradients.
That profile, from the APM foro guys, goes from the turn-off from the Ötztal valley road to the Tiefenbachferner. The total for that is a pretty brutal
13,8km @ 10,8%. The Rettenbachferner is at the asterisk, roughly speaking - at an altitude of
2670m. Depending on where you put the start (many use the village of Sölden itself as the commencement point), Its profile can be considered
12,1km @ 10,7% or
12,4km @ 10,5%, with a maximum of a not at all inconsiderable 18%.
Do those figures sound quite familiar to you? They should, as they are incredibly reminiscent of the
Mortirolo from Mazzo, one of Italy's most legendary and storied ascents. The Rettenbachferner is a little more consistent than the Mortirolo in its ascents at least (there is that very brief, barely perceptible descent in there), but this is offset by its being some 800m higher up in altitude, and do not consider that that would not be a factor in racing. Here we are higher than the Gavia, higher than Galibier... the
only climbs competitive cycling in Europe is familiar with that top out above the Rettenbachferner are the Cime de la Bonette, the Col de l'Iseran, the Col d'Agnel and the Passo dello Stelvio. And if we went to the Tiefenbachferner, it tops out at 2830m and dwarfs all of these, with only Pico Veleta to defeat it.
, but I can't see it being a problem for them.
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