Originally Posted by
Louis Le Tour
Uhhhhhhhhhh..............golly Bob, the highest point in the Appalachians is what, somewhere in the range of 4000 ft.? How "brutal" can the climbs be?
You probably wouldn't say that if you had ridden the Trans America. Having ridden the TA I can say that I found the climbs in the Appalachians to be substantially harder than anything in the Rockies or Cascades on the TA. They may not be that high or that long, but they are crazy steep and one after another. The climbs in the west on the TA were long, but well graded.
I started in the west so I was road hardened by the time I got to the Appalachians and still found them harder. My companions agreed.
There are super tough climbs in the west, I know we found the Sierras on the SC extremely hard, but on the TA the Appalachians and the Ozarks were harder than the climbs earlier in the ride in the west were.
That is my take on it any way. YMMV though.