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Upper Iowa Bluffs
Upper Iowa Bluffs is 48.4 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 67 minutes; allow 95 with stops — a half day. It is scored CS-4, Twisty: 79 corners, 143° of turning per mile, 2,202 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.
- Curviness
- CS-4Twisty · 1.63/mi
- Distance
- 48.4 mi67 min riding
- Corners
- 7961% sharp · Tight
- Climbing
- 2,202 ft46 ft/mi · Steep
- Shape
- LoopHalf day
- Roads
- Backroads98% county & local
- Traffic
- —no published counts
- Speed limit
- 55 mphtypically 55
How it rides
79 corners over 48.4 miles — 1.63 a mile, and 143° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-4, Twisty on the five-point curviness scale. 61% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as tight.
What it climbs
The road climbs 2,202 feet in total, 46 feet per mile, between 836 and 1,301 feet — 465 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 367 feet over 2.7 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 8.2%. By Driftless standards that is steep.
Surface, speed and traffic
85.5% paved — the rest is gravel or seal coat, so check the surface before you commit. 98% of it is back road rather than highway, the other 2% state or US route. Posted speeds run to 55 mph, typically 55, measured across 21% 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
- 14% 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.