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Great River Road: La Crosse to Prairie du Chien

Great River Road: La Crosse to Prairie du Chien is 62.6 miles of point-to-point riding through La Crosse, Vernon and Crawford Counties in Wisconsin — the Coulee Region, the coulees, ridge tops and river bluffs of south-west Wisconsin. Moving time is about 76 minutes; allow 110 with stops — a half day. It is scored CS-1, Cruiser: 39 corners, 86° of turning per mile, 2,218 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.

Curviness
CS-1Cruiser · 0.62/mi
Distance
62.6 mi76 min riding
Corners
3946% sharp · Tight
Climbing
2,218 ft36 ft/mi · Rolling
Shape
Point-to-pointHalf day
Roads
Highway miles11% county & local
Traffic
2,800vehicles a day, median
Speed limit
55 mphtypically 55
Open this route in the app

How it rides

39 corners over 62.6 miles — 0.62 a mile, and 86° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-1, Cruiser on the five-point curviness scale. 46% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as tight.

What it climbs

The road climbs 2,218 feet in total, 36 feet per mile, between 614 and 1,195 feet — 581 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 527 feet over 3.0 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 8.8%. By Driftless standards that is rolling.

Surface, speed and traffic

Paved end to end. 11% of it is back road rather than highway, the other 89% state or US route. Posted speeds run to 55 mph, typically 55, measured across 88% of the route. Where traffic counts exist — 33% of the miles — the median is 2,800 vehicles a day, busiest at mile 2.7 with 24,700.

Worth knowing

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.

Nearby roads