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Cataract–Melrose Backroads
Cataract–Melrose Backroads is 37.8 miles of point-to-point riding through Monroe and La Crosse Counties in Wisconsin — the Coulee Region, the coulees, ridge tops and river bluffs of south-west Wisconsin. Moving time is about 48 minutes; allow 70 with stops — a half morning. It is scored CS-3, Spirited: 54 corners, 137° of turning per mile, 1,662 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.
- Curviness
- CS-3Spirited · 1.43/mi
- Distance
- 37.8 mi48 min riding
- Corners
- 5444% sharp · Mixed
- Climbing
- 1,662 ft44 ft/mi · Steep
- Shape
- Point-to-pointHalf morning
- Roads
- Backroads50% county & local
- Traffic
- 2,100vehicles a day, median
- Speed limit
- 55 mphtypically 55
How it rides
54 corners over 37.8 miles — 1.43 a mile, and 137° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-3, Spirited 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 1,662 feet in total, 44 feet per mile, between 693 and 1,198 feet — 504 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 426 feet over 3.9 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 9.6%. By Driftless standards that is steep.
Surface, speed and traffic
Paved end to end. 50% of it is back road rather than highway, the other 50% state or US route. Posted speeds run to 55 mph, typically 55, measured across 38% of the route. Where traffic counts exist — 22% of the miles — the median is 2,100 vehicles a day, busiest at mile 37.2 with 9,200.
- Backroads
- One way
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.