Hellingen of the West

So I recently spent a little time in Gothenburg working with a friend of mine. I used to live up there but that was before my cycling days so I was looking forward to a couple of rides and some new roads. Now, there is a lot of good cycling around Gothenburg and it is a nice change of pace to what one finds around where I live at the moment. One of the absolutely high points of the two rides we
managed to squeeze in was Hultebacken. There are no high mountains around Gothenburg. Beyond the odd esker there is little to take one skyward more than a hundred meters or so. Indeed it gets higher inland but it comes gradually and is hard to really notice. What is spectacular about these 600 or so meters is the gradient. The 12% average should signal that it might be steep, which it is, but it actually betrays just how difficult the climb is. It comes in three ramps with two flatter sections in the middle. The first ramp is the steepest and tops out somewhere north of 20% degrees, the other two hover around 16-17%. Momentum is key. Hit the bottom of the climb full throttle and sprint up the first part. The rest is just trying to manage lactate levels and recover a little without coming to a complete halt in the flatter parts.