Caminantes

Camino Invierno elevation profile

263.1 km and 4,941 m of ascent, between 63 m and 1,077 m. Measured from the route's own GPS track rather than copied from anywhere, which matters more than it should: almost every ascent figure published for these routes, including ours until August 2026, was an estimate nobody could source.

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0200400600800100002550751001251501752002252501,077 m

Metres up the side, kilometres along the bottom. Ticks are stage boundaries. Sampled every 100 m against SRTM 30m, smoothed over 500 m, climbs under 3 m discarded as noise.

Move across the profile to read any point, or drag to measure a stretch. With the keyboard: focus the profile, then arrow keys to move, shift for finer steps, Enter to start and end a measurement, Escape to clear. Each stage in the table below can also be measured directly.

What the profile shows

The Camino Invierno climbs 18.8 m per kilometre on average, which makes it the third steepest of the 10 routes measured here. A total on its own mostly measures how long a route is; per kilometre is what decides whether your days feel hilly.

The climbing is not spread evenly. The middle third of the route carries 43% of the total ascent (32%, 43% and 25% across the three thirds), so pace yourself for that section rather than for the average.

The longest sustained climb runs from km 157 to km 171, gaining 591 m over 14.5 km, an average grade of 4.1%. The high point, 1,077 m, comes at km 171, 65% of the way in.

The hardest days

Ranked by climbing rather than distance, which is a different list and the one that decides how the evening feels.

  • Day 8, As Lamas to Chantada : 704 m over 26.6 km
  • Day 9, Chantada to Rodeiro : 660 m over 24.9 km
  • Day 6, Quiroga to A Pobra do Brollón : 586 m over 23.4 km
  • Day 13, Pardellas to Santiago de Compostela : 533 m over 26.5 km
  • Day 5, Petín to Quiroga : 472 m over 24.3 km

Every stage

Measured ascent for every stage of the Camino Invierno
DayFromTokmAscentHigh point
1PonferradaBorrenes19.7460 m809 m
2BorrenesPuente de Domingo Flórez15.1319 m805 m
3Puente de Domingo FlórezO Barco18.1262 m432 m
4O BarcoPetín15.8147 m365 m
5PetínQuiroga24.3472 m473 m
6QuirogaA Pobra do Brollón23.4586 m584 m
7A Pobra do BrollónAs Lamas15.2122 m435 m
8As LamasChantada26.6704 m613 m
9ChantadaRodeiro24.9660 m1077 m
10RodeiroLalín22.2307 m661 m
11LalínSilleda16.1232 m556 m
12SilledaPardellas15.2135 m492 m
13PardellasSantiago de Compostela26.5533 m347 m

Stages are a suggested split, not a rule. Most people walk their own.

Where the numbers come from

The GPS track carries position but no height, so the altitude was measured rather than read off: 2,632 points along the route, one every 100 m, each looked up against the SRTM 30 m elevation dataset.

One check worth stating, because it is the difference between plausible and correct. Total ascent minus total descent comes to -287 m. The profile's own start and finish differ by -275 m, so the two agree to within 12 m over 263.1 km.

They do not match exactly, and the reason is the noise floor: climbs under 3 m are discarded as sensor jitter, which removes a little real height along with a lot of imaginary height. A tool claiming these two numbers agree perfectly would be hiding that.

Ascent depends on method. Sample more finely and you measure noise as climbing; smooth harder and you flatten real hills. Anyone quoting a single authoritative number for a route this long is hiding that choice, so the settings used here are stated above and you can compare like with like.

Route facts, stages and the full description are on the Camino Invierno route page. Every route's profile is on the elevation profiles page, and how the ten routes compare puts the totals side by side.

Compare with another route

All measured the same way, so the numbers are comparable. Ordered by total ascent, hardest first.