ScenicCurvesHome / Routes / Minnesota / Pilot Mound and the Fillmore Ridges
Pilot Mound and the Fillmore Ridges
Pilot Mound and the Fillmore Ridges is 37.6 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 45 minutes; allow 65 with stops — a half morning. It is scored CS-4, Twisty: 65 corners, 148° of turning per mile, 1,879 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.
- Curviness
- CS-4Twisty · 1.73/mi
- Distance
- 37.6 mi45 min riding
- Corners
- 6551% sharp · Tight
- Climbing
- 1,879 ft50 ft/mi · Relentless
- Shape
- LoopHalf morning
- Roads
- Backroads83% county & local
- Traffic
- 1,579vehicles a day, median
- Speed limit
- 60 mphtypically 60
How it rides
65 corners over 37.6 miles — 1.73 a mile, and 148° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-4, Twisty on the five-point curviness scale. 51% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as tight.
What it climbs
The road climbs 1,879 feet in total, 50 feet per mile, between 787 and 1,312 feet — 525 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 426 feet over 3.4 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 8.0%. By Driftless standards that is relentless.
Surface, speed and traffic
Paved end to end. 83% of it is back road rather than highway, the other 17% state or US route. Posted speeds run to 60 mph, typically 60, measured across 48% of the route. Where traffic counts exist — 27% of the miles — the median is 1,579 vehicles a day, busiest at mile 37.2 with 6,320.
- Sport ride
- Backroads
- Loop
- Big climbs
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.