El Teide (South side)
Riders on the south side of El Teide, on Tenerife in Spain, climb to Vilaflor de Chasna, a village whose name keeps a word from before the Spanish conquest. Chasna is a Guanche name, and it also named the Camino de Chasna, the old way over the mountain from the Orotava valley, which came down through the village. Vilaflor officially added the old name to its own in 2014. In the 19th century the naturalists Philip Barker Webb and Sabino Berthelot followed the Camino de Chasna to reach Teide. In November 2023 the Giro d’Italia’s Ride Like a Pro gran fondo made Vilaflor the feed stop of its second stage, after some 45 km of climbing from the beach at Los Cristianos.
This ride climbs the south side from below Arona through Vilaflor and over the top, then turns down the TF-38 towards Chío. The TF-51 brings it up to Vilaflor, at about 1,400 metres. Just above the village the TF-21 passes the Pino Gordo, a Canary pine some 45 metres tall. With the Pino de las Dos Pernadas it is one of the two oldest and largest Canary pines, and because of them Vilaflor was named the world’s ‘kilometre zero’ of the Canary pine in 2023. The forest belongs to the Corona Forestal, the largest protected area in the Canary Islands. The road tops out above Boca Tauce and drops to the junction where the TF-38 leaves the crater. The ride turns down it through the lava fields and ends back among the pines above Chío.
Region: Canarias
City: Arona
Distance: 52.89 km
Elevation Gain: 1854 m
Elevation Loss: 1136 m
Difficulty: 1413 (Very Hard)
FIETS Index: 12.48 FIETS
Avg Grade: 6.37 %
Max cat climb: HC
Min elevation: 399 m
Max elevation: 2201 m
Ride Category: Climb