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Chatfield and the Pilot Mound Ridges
Chatfield and the Pilot Mound Ridges is 48.6 miles of loop riding through Fillmore County in Minnesota — Bluff Country, the Root River valley, the Mississippi bluffs and the ridge roads above them. Moving time is about 55 minutes; allow 80 with stops — a half morning. It is scored CS-4, Twisty: 79 corners, 136° of turning per mile, 2,442 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.
- Curviness
- CS-4Twisty · 1.62/mi
- Distance
- 48.6 mi55 min riding
- Corners
- 7944% sharp · Mixed
- Climbing
- 2,442 ft50 ft/mi · Relentless
- Shape
- LoopHalf morning
- Roads
- Backroads68% county & local
- Traffic
- 1,344vehicles a day, median
- Speed limit
- 60 mphtypically 60
How it rides
79 corners over 48.6 miles — 1.62 a mile, and 136° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-4, Twisty on the five-point curviness scale. 44% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as mixed.
What it climbs
The road climbs 2,442 feet in total, 50 feet per mile, between 788 and 1,312 feet — 523 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 388 feet over 2.3 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 8.1%. By Driftless standards that is relentless.
Surface, speed and traffic
Paved end to end. 68% of it is back road rather than highway, the other 32% state or US route. Posted speeds run to 60 mph, typically 60, measured across 68% of the route. Where traffic counts exist — 29% of the miles — the median is 1,344 vehicles a day, busiest at mile 48.1 with 6,320.
- Backroads
- Loop
- Big climbs
- Low traffic
Worth knowing
- 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.