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Yellow River Country
Yellow River Country is 63.3 miles of loop riding through Allamakee County in Iowa — Driftless Iowa, the Upper Iowa, the Yellow River country and the climbs out of the Mississippi. Moving time is about 85 minutes; allow 125 with stops — a full day. It is scored CS-3, Spirited: 92 corners, 134° of turning per mile, 3,214 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.
- Curviness
- CS-3Spirited · 1.45/mi
- Distance
- 63.3 mi85 min riding
- Corners
- 9239% sharp · Mixed
- Climbing
- 3,214 ft51 ft/mi · Relentless
- Shape
- LoopFull day
- Roads
- Backroads100% county & local
- Traffic
- —no published counts
How it rides
92 corners over 63.3 miles — 1.45 a mile, and 134° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-3, Spirited on the five-point curviness scale. 39% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as mixed.
What it climbs
The road climbs 3,214 feet in total, 51 feet per mile, between 623 and 1,319 feet — 697 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 501 feet over 3.8 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 8.1%. By Driftless standards that is relentless.
Surface, speed and traffic
88.4% paved — the rest is gravel or seal coat, so check the surface before you commit. 100% of it is back road rather than highway. No published traffic counts cover this route, so it carries no traffic figure rather than a borrowed one.
- Backroads
- Loop
- Big climbs
Worth knowing
- 12% 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.