2'501 m
Graubünden / Lombardia, Italy
The Umbrail is the highest paved road pass in Switzerland, climbing to 2,501 metres on the Swiss-Italian border, where it joins Santa Maria in the Val Müstair to the Stelvio Pass road and Bormio in the Valtellina.
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The Umbrail is the highest paved road pass in Switzerland, climbing to 2,501 metres on the Swiss-Italian border, where it joins Santa Maria in the Val Müstair to the Stelvio Pass road and Bormio in the Valtellina. The crossing is old – a medieval route over which mule trains carried wine, corn and salt across the Alps – but its road is comparatively young: built in 1901 to reach the Stelvio road constructed 75 years earlier, and fully asphalted only in 2015, the last of Switzerland's great gravel passes. High and exposed, it lay on the "front in rock and ice" of the First World War, where Swiss forces dug trenches and fortifications that can still be seen today.
Today the Umbrail lives quietly in the shadow of the mighty Stelvio beside it – were it not for that neighbour, it would probably be more famous. From the Swiss side it is quieter, steeper and more exposed, an insider's climb well known among cyclists. It had its moment of drama in 2017, when Giro d'Italia leader Tom Dumoulin, hit by stomach trouble, was forced to stop at the roadside on the approach and lost the pink jersey on the spot, yet recovered to win the Giro overall.
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