Kickapoo Valley to the Great River

Kickapoo Valley to the Great River is a tour: 84 miles, a loop, through Crawford, La Crosse and Vernon counties in Wisconsin — Coulee Region. Moving time is about 102 minutes; allow 150 with stops. It is scored CS-4, Twisty: 137 corners, 153° of turning per mile, 4,538 feet of climbing. Every mile of it is road that a route in the corpus already publishes — nothing here is new ground, and no route was changed to make it. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.

Curviness

CS-4Twisty · 1.63/mi

Distance

84 mi102 min riding

Corners

13738% sharp · Sweeping

Climbing

4,538 ft54 ft/mi · Relentless

Shape

LoopFull day

Surface

100% paved72% county and local

Speed limit

55 mphtypically 55 · 45% of miles posted

Traffic

Not counteda tour's traffic is not yet measured

About this road

Two valleys and the river they both end at. The tour works the lower Kickapoo around Gays Mills and Soldiers Grove, climbs west over the ridges through Viroqua, meets the Mississippi at Genoa at about mile 50 and turns south along WIS 35 for Victory, De Soto and Ferryville. The Kickapoo is a river that doubles back on itself: the USGS maps it at 126 miles from a source north of Wilton that is only about 60 miles from its mouth at Wauzeka, and the roads beside it inherit that. The 8,569-acre Kickapoo Valley Reserve lies upstream of this ride, between La Farge and Ontario; the tour does not reach it. WIS 35 is the Wisconsin Great River Road, which the state's Department of Transportation describes as 250 miles through 33 river towns and which carries the All-American Road designation. The 16.5 miles of it in this tour are the straightest of the day by a wide margin - 98 degrees of turning for every mile against 215 on the CTH K stretch - and they come after the climbing rather than before it.

Sources: Kickapoo Valley Reserve (kickapoovalley.wi.gov); USGS National Hydrography Dataset for the river's length; WisDOT scenic byways page for the Great River Road.

The climb

What it is built from

Roads from 10 routes already in the corpus: Great River Road: La Crosse to Prairie du Chien, Rush Creek Bluffs Loop, Kickapoo Valley Run: Ontario to Gays Mills, Crawford Ridge Runner, Lower Kickapoo: Wauzeka to Soldiers Grove, Apple Ridge: Ferryville to Viroqua, The Big Driftless Loop, Highway 56: Genoa to Viola, Two Highways and a River, Lynxville–Seneca–Ferryville Loop.

Ride it

Tours are part of a subscription rather than the three free roads: a tour is a day built out of ten of them. See what a subscription costs, or open the app if you already have one.