Caminantes

Camino Invierno elevation profile

262.9 km and 4,948 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.

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 156 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, Pereira to Chantada — 773 m over 27 km
  • Day 9, Chantada to Rodeiro — 617 m over 25.3 km
  • Day 6, Quiroga to A Pobra do Brollón — 598 m over 23.9 km
  • Day 13, Loimil to Santiago de Compostela — 513 m over 27.1 km
  • Day 5, Petín to Quiroga — 467 m over 23.9 km

Every stage

Measured ascent for every stage of the Camino Invierno
DayFromTokmAscentHigh point
1PonferradaBorrenes19.1460 m809 m
2BorrenesPuente de Domingo Flórez15.1319 m805 m
3Puente de Domingo FlórezO Barco18.1262 m442 m
4O BarcoPetín15.7145 m361 m
5PetínQuiroga23.9467 m473 m
6QuirogaA Pobra do Brollón23.9598 m584 m
7A Pobra do BrollónPereira16.5125 m436 m
8PereiraChantada27773 m613 m
9ChantadaRodeiro25.3617 m1077 m
10RodeiroLalín22.2281 m661 m
11LalínSilleda15.4233 m520 m
12SilledaLoimil15.1156 m469 m
13LoimilSantiago de Compostela27.1513 m341 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: 2,630 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 -283 m. The profile's own start and finish differ by -276 m, so the two agree to within 7 m over 262.9 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.

The Camino Invierno page says 260 km and this track measures 262.9 km, a difference of 1.1%. Both are right. The quoted distance is the conventional one every guide and waymarking sign uses; the measured one is the length of this particular GPS trace, and any two traces of the same route differ by roughly this much depending on which variant they take through each town. The ascent above is computed along the track shown here, so it belongs with 262.9 km rather than with the quoted figure.

Route facts, stages and the full description are on the Camino Invierno route page. Every route's profile is on the tools page.

Compare with another route

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