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Eldorado and Ossian
Eldorado and Ossian is 51.2 miles of loop riding through Winneshiek County in Iowa — Driftless Iowa, the Upper Iowa, the Yellow River country and the climbs out of the Mississippi. Moving time is about 65 minutes; allow 95 with stops — a half day. It is scored CS-2, Easy: 60 corners, 113° of turning per mile, 1,877 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.
- Curviness
- CS-2Easy · 1.17/mi
- Distance
- 51.2 mi65 min riding
- Corners
- 6052% sharp · Tight
- Climbing
- 1,877 ft37 ft/mi · Rolling
- Shape
- LoopHalf day
- Roads
- Backroads81% county & local
- Traffic
- —no published counts
- Speed limit
- 55 mphtypically 55
How it rides
60 corners over 51.2 miles — 1.17 a mile, and 113° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-2, Easy on the five-point curviness scale. 52% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as tight.
What it climbs
The road climbs 1,877 feet in total, 37 feet per mile, between 849 and 1,291 feet — 442 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 232 feet over 1.8 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 6.0%. By Driftless standards that is rolling.
Surface, speed and traffic
84.6% paved — the rest is gravel or seal coat, so check the surface before you commit. 81% of it is back road rather than highway, the other 19% state or US route. Posted speeds run to 55 mph, typically 55, measured across 20% of the route. No published traffic counts cover this route, so it carries no traffic figure rather than a borrowed one.
- Backroads
- Loop
Worth knowing
- 15% unverified surface
- Fuel sparse — top off before you go
Turn-by-turn directions and the spoken notes along the way are in the app. Every figure on this page is measured from the route itself — corner counts and gradients from the road geometry, elevation from the national elevation dataset, traffic from the state transport departments where counts exist.