How Did Alto de Patios Become the World’s Most Attempted Climb?

The short answer: eight million Bogotanos and their own backyard.

KM 0 towards Belisario.

By 5am, Patios is already busy: locals ride it a few times a week before work and before the traffic, passing nightclub stragglers still finding their way home. For some it's a race against the PR. For most, it's routine: the training ground that keeps you sharp and humble.

Ask anyone who actually rides it and the real number is bigger than the count says. One rider put it plainly: 'So many of us have ridden it regularly for years before the app.' Patios has been part of Bogotá's cycling routine for decades. The world just started counting.

The anatomy of the world’s most famous climb.

Everyone’s Climb

Cycling in Colombia belongs to everyone, and the people who climb Patios ritually, prove it every morning. A pro training for Europe rides past a father and son out for a Sunday ride. It's part of why cycling became a national identity, and Patios is the clearest place to see it.

A Lifelong Relationship

Some riders count it. One has logged Patios over 500 times and is still going. Another has been climbing it since he was fifteen, and puts it simply: 'That climb has seen me through every moment of my life.' Fifteen or seventy, it's the same lifelong relationship with the same climb.

Alto de Patios is ridden daily, routinely and ritually.

Where It Takes You

Door to door, Patios is reachable on Bogotá's bike lanes without ever needing a car. It climbs the Cerros Orientales, the ridge that marks where Bogotá ends. Cross the toll at the summit and you're not really in the city anymore, you're in the sabana, a high plateau nearly six times the size of Singapore. A network of paved roads connects the savannah to páramo. Gravel and MTB routes head toward Chingaza National Park. The reservoirs at Guatavita sit further out, and the backroads to El Verjón climb to the highest point on the savannah. None of it is visible from the summit. All of it starts there.

The real gateway to Bogotá’s savannah.

The Long Answer

It's shaped the city's cycling culture, and the 'attempts' keep climbing with it. None of that matters much to the people who actually ride it routinely, already back down and riding home with a white plastic bag of Bethlehem Vegano pastry before the city presses snooze.