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Winona Bluff Loop
Winona Bluff Loop is 65.2 miles of loop riding through Winona County in Minnesota — Bluff Country, the Root River valley, the Mississippi bluffs and the ridge roads above them. Moving time is about 87 minutes; allow 125 with stops — a full day. It is scored CS-3, Spirited: 88 corners, 148° of turning per mile, 2,758 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.
- Curviness
- CS-3Spirited · 1.35/mi
- Distance
- 65.2 mi87 min riding
- Corners
- 8845% sharp · Mixed
- Climbing
- 2,758 ft43 ft/mi · Hilly
- Shape
- LoopFull day
- Roads
- Backroads89% county & local
- Traffic
- 525vehicles a day, median
- Speed limit
- 65 mphtypically 55
How it rides
88 corners over 65.2 miles — 1.35 a mile, and 148° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-3, Spirited on the five-point curviness scale. 45% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as mixed.
What it climbs
The road climbs 2,758 feet in total, 43 feet per mile, between 642 and 1,348 feet — 706 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 513 feet over 1.8 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 9.1%. By Driftless standards that is hilly.
Surface, speed and traffic
Paved end to end. 89% of it is back road rather than highway, the other 11% state or US route. Posted speeds run to 65 mph, typically 55, measured across 25% of the route. Where traffic counts exist — 32% of the miles — the median is 525 vehicles a day, busiest at mile 1.4 with 17,430.
- Backroads
- Easy logistics
- Loop
- Low traffic
Worth knowing
- Busy stretch near mile 1 (17,430 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.