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Chatfield and the Pilot Mound Ridges

Chatfield and the Pilot Mound Ridges is 48.6 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 55 minutes; allow 80 with stops — a half morning. It is scored CS-4, Twisty: 79 corners, 136° of turning per mile, 2,442 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.

Curviness
CS-4Twisty · 1.62/mi
Distance
48.6 mi55 min riding
Corners
7944% sharp · Mixed
Climbing
2,442 ft50 ft/mi · Relentless
Shape
LoopHalf morning
Roads
Backroads68% county & local
Traffic
1,344vehicles a day, median
Speed limit
60 mphtypically 60
Open this route in the app

About this road

Pilot Mound is a local high point and landmark; early settlers used prominent mounds and ridges as navigation aids, and the name records that practical geography. The loop around Chatfield explores the surrounding ridges with the tight corners and short steep pitches typical of the more dissected uplands. Chatfield itself sits on the Root River and benefits from the trail and river recreation that define the valley. Climbing to Pilot Mound supplies the view that justified the name and the effort. The technical character is real and concentrated in a moderate distance. This loop pairs the practical service center of Chatfield with the pure elevation and orientation value of Pilot Mound—utility and reward in a coherent half-morning.

How it rides

79 corners over 48.6 miles — 1.62 a mile, and 136° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-4, Twisty 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 2,442 feet in total, 50 feet per mile, between 788 and 1,312 feet — 523 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 388 feet over 2.3 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 8.1%. By Driftless standards that is relentless.

Surface, speed and traffic

Paved end to end. 68% of it is back road rather than highway, the other 32% state or US route. Posted speeds run to 60 mph, typically 60, measured across 68% of the route. Where traffic counts exist — 29% of the miles — the median is 1,344 vehicles a day, busiest at mile 48.1 with 6,320.

Where to stop

3 of the towns on this road have somewhere to stop — 2 fuel, 5 food, 1 bars.

Longest stretch without fuel: 33.8 miles. Worth knowing before you set off if your tank is small. Some towns on this road are not yet measured along the line, so treat that as the worst case rather than the likely one.

Listed alphabetically, and chosen by us rather than rated by anybody. The order you reach them, and the mile each one sits at, are in the app.

Worth knowing

Turn-by-turn directions and the spoken guidance 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