Originally Posted by terrymorse
Ah, Mt. Hamilton. It's a beautiful climb. Too bad it's an hour by bike to the base for me. I'd do it more often if it were closer.
The road was graded to allow a mult team to pull the Lick telescope to the summit. The road is actually 18.1 miles, 4045 feet, and 3 seperate climbs with short intermediate descents:
Climb 1: 5.9 miles, 1450' (4.7%)
Climb 2: 3.2 miles, 725' (4.3%)
Climb 3: 6.2 miles, 1860' (5.7%)
And just to make us all feel soft and weak:
When the Mt. Hamilton Road Race does that climb, the faster riders do it in under 1:10.
How would Mt. Hamilton be classified if we were using the UCI race categories? Is it a CAT1 peak? With the intermediate descents I'm wondering if that prevents it from being an HC. What about Mt. Diablo?
Are there general rules for how to classify the climbs? Is it base on some selection rules or is it decided on a case by case basis?