ScenicCurvesThe Root River, End to End
The Root River, End to End is a tour: 86.5 miles, ridden out and back, through Fillmore, Houston and Winona counties in Minnesota — Bluff Country. Moving time is about 105 minutes; allow 150 with stops. It is scored CS-4, Twisty: 146 corners, 145° of turning per mile, 4,654 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. It rides out and turns at mile 43.25, so the second half is the first half the other way round — which on these roads is a different ride, and is still the same pavement.
- Curviness
- CS-4Twisty · 1.69/mi
- Distance
- 86.5 mi105 min riding
- Corners
- 14642% sharp · Mixed
- Climbing
- 4,654 ft54 ft/mi · Relentless
- Shape
- Out and backFull day
- Surface
- 100% paved62% county and local
- Speed limit
- 55 mphtypically 55 · 38% of miles posted
- Traffic
- Not counteda tour's traffic is not yet measured
About this road
The Root River cut this valley and the roads took the easy line beside it. The tour runs the length of the valley from the Rushford end up through Peterson and Lanesboro and back, which is also roughly the line of the Root River State Trail - 42 paved miles from Fountain to Houston, through Lanesboro, Whalan, Peterson and Rushford, under what the Minnesota DNR calls the soaring limestone bluffs of the Root River Valley. This one rides out and turns rather than looping, and the reason is measurable rather than aesthetic: across the whole Bluff Country network of corpus roads, the longest circuit that never repeats a stretch comes to 58 miles, which is short of a long day. So the tour takes the best of the valley and comes back along it. The same road the other way round is a different view of the same bluffs, and it is still the same road.
Sources: Minnesota DNR, Root River State Trail.
The climb
What it is built from
Roads from 7 routes already in the corpus: Root River Run, Highway 43: Winona to Rushford, Money Creek Coulees, Chatfield and the Pilot Mound Ridges, Bratsberg and Choice Ridge, The Root River Round Trip, Root River South Bank: Rushford to Lanesboro.
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.