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La Crescent and the Pine Creek Coulees
La Crescent and the Pine Creek Coulees is 43.5 miles of loop riding through Houston County in Minnesota — Bluff Country, the Root River valley, the Mississippi bluffs and the ridge roads above them. Moving time is about 57 minutes; allow 85 with stops — a half morning. It is scored CS-2, Easy: 50 corners, 131° of turning per mile, 1,813 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.
- Curviness
- CS-2Easy · 1.15/mi
- Distance
- 43.5 mi57 min riding
- Corners
- 5050% sharp · Tight
- Climbing
- 1,813 ft42 ft/mi · Hilly
- Shape
- LoopHalf morning
- Roads
- Backroads96% county & local
- Traffic
- 661vehicles a day, median
- Speed limit
- 50 mphtypically 50
How it rides
50 corners over 43.5 miles — 1.15 a mile, and 131° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-2, Easy on the five-point curviness scale. 50% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as tight.
What it climbs
The road climbs 1,813 feet in total, 42 feet per mile, between 621 and 1,302 feet — 681 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 370 feet over 3.6 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 7.2%. By Driftless standards that is hilly.
Surface, speed and traffic
91.9% paved — the rest is gravel or seal coat, so check the surface before you commit. 96% of it is back road rather than highway, the other 4% state or US route. Posted speeds run to 50 mph, typically 50, measured across 5% of the route. Where traffic counts exist — 28% of the miles — the median is 661 vehicles a day, busiest at mile 0.0 with 17,716.
- Scenic cruise
- Backroads
- Loop
- River road
- Low traffic
Worth knowing
- 8% unverified surface
- Fuel sparse — top off before you go
- Busy stretch near mile 0 (17,716 vehicles a day)
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.