Caminantes

Camino Mozárabe elevation profile

418 km and 4,617 m of ascent,between 93 m and 1,018 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.

020040060080010000501001502002503003504001,018 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 Mozárabe climbs 11.0 m per kilometre on average, which makes it the gentlest 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 first third of the route carries 42% of the total ascent (42%, 40% and 18% across the three thirds), so pace yourself for that section rather than for the average.

The longest sustained climb runs from km 173 to km 190, gaining 457 m over 17.3 km, an average grade of 2.6%. The high point, 1,018 m, comes at km 33, 8% 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 2, Pinos Puente to La Alhondiguilla — 765 m over 23.4 km
  • Day 11, Villaharta to Alcaracejos — 553 m over 34.9 km
  • Day 9, Córdoba to Cerro Muriano — 472 m over 17.5 km
  • Day 7, Castro del Río to Santa Cruz — 343 m over 23.8 km
  • Day 8, Santa Cruz to Córdoba — 334 m over 26.2 km

Every stage

Measured ascent for every stage of the Camino Mozárabe
DayFromTokmAscentHigh point
1GranadaPinos Puente2034 m695 m
2Pinos PuenteLa Alhondiguilla23.4765 m1018 m
3La AlhondiguillaPuertollano18.7305 m947 m
4PuertollanoAlcaudete17.5225 m834 m
5AlcaudeteBaena25.7254 m671 m
6BaenaCastro del Río19.593 m419 m
7Castro del RíoSanta Cruz23.8343 m405 m
8Santa CruzCórdoba26.2334 m293 m
9CórdobaCerro Muriano17.5472 m556 m
10Cerro MurianoVillaharta20257 m647 m
11VillahartaAlcaracejos34.9553 m746 m
12AlcaracejosHinojosa del Duque21.699 m609 m
13Hinojosa del DuqueMonterrubio de la Serena32.1241 m559 m
14Monterrubio de la SerenaCastuera18.9119 m554 m
15CastueraCampanario19.7115 m498 m
16CampanarioDon Benito28.4152 m422 m
17Don BenitoSanta Amalia1930 m277 m
18Santa AmaliaMérida31.6225 m344 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: 4,180 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 -478 m. The profile's own start and finish differ by -474 m, so the two agree to within 4 m over 418 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 Mozárabe 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.