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Protivin and the Czech Ridges
Protivin and the Czech Ridges is 47.1 miles of loop riding through Winneshiek and Howard Counties in Iowa — Driftless Iowa, the Upper Iowa, the Yellow River country and the climbs out of the Mississippi. Moving time is about 59 minutes; allow 85 with stops — a half morning. It is scored CS-2, Easy: 48 corners, 92° of turning per mile, 1,248 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.
- Curviness
- CS-2Easy · 1.02/mi
- Distance
- 47.1 mi59 min riding
- Corners
- 4862% sharp · Tight
- Climbing
- 1,248 ft27 ft/mi · Gentle
- Shape
- LoopHalf morning
- Roads
- Backroads84% county & local
- Traffic
- —no published counts
- Speed limit
- 55 mphtypically 55
How it rides
48 corners over 47.1 miles — 1.02 a mile, and 92° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-2, Easy on the five-point curviness scale. 62% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as tight.
What it climbs
The road climbs 1,248 feet in total, 27 feet per mile, between 876 and 1,279 feet — 403 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 293 feet over 3.7 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 6.0%. By Driftless standards that is gentle.
Surface, speed and traffic
94.9% paved — the rest is gravel or seal coat, so check the surface before you commit. 84% of it is back road rather than highway, the other 16% state or US route. Posted speeds run to 55 mph, typically 55, measured across 33% 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
- 5% unverified surface
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.