Does anyone know the vertical rise and % grade of Ross Drive from Beach Drive to its highest point?
Feels like about 2 feet shorter than Everest to me...
JH Bahn

From the USGS topo map it looks like 200 feet of rise in 1.2 miles, with most of it happening in two short stretches.
Next time I'm out there I'll try to measure the grade.

Damn. I thought it was at least a million!
JH

Try Porter Street, or the hill next to the zoo. If I remember right, those are better than 15% grades at their steepest.

Tilden Street (between Beach Drive and Connecticut Avenue) is a pretty good hill, too.

As is Brandywine coming up from Broad Branch - especially since it always comes at the tail end of my rides...

Awesome! Short steep climbs in upper NW DC! My favorites:

Brandywine, Tilden, Porter (all mentioned above)
Davenport from Broad Branch, then to Linnean to Ellicot
27th from Broad Branch to Military
Normanstone Dr, Woodland Dr (both off of Mass Ave, bw Mass and Cleveland)

Ride. Repeat. Enjoy.

Add to this fun Chain Bridge Road off of MacArthur (steep and rough, and a nice break from the tedium that is MacArthur Blvd). You could also add Loughboro Road to this mix, as the climb past Sibley and up to AU is a nice grind on smooth pavement.

And if you head out of the District toward Great Falls on MacArthur, there's Walhonding Rd (into the Mohican Hills development) or Mountain Gate Drive. The latter is a leg and lung burner, and makes a nice loop with another steep shot, Brickyard Road (again, off of MacArthur).

As a bit of a shameless plug: the PPTC "Downtown Breakaway" rides, which run every Tuesday evening starting in April, use a lot of these climbs (not the Rock Creek Park ones, save for the "Summer Solstice" variation) to get good miles in a limited time frame (limited by sunset). I'm one of the leaders of this ride, and it's a good way to get good training miles on a weeknight, starting and ending in DC.

Since you're going out of the city limits too, let's include Military Road in Arlington, which is hilly but not too bad. The worst is the short road veering to the right off of Glebe Road as you enter Virginia from Chain Bridge. It's marked as a bike path, but you nearly tip over backward it's so steep! (Oops, now I'm technicaly writing about the Southeast, not the Northeast).

That's 41st Street. I've ridden down it many times, but I've never ridden up....yet.
It's steeper than my inclinometer can read - more than 21%.

North Arlington is good for a hill workout.

If you don't mind going the wrong way up a (low traffic) one way, Harvard St. from the Zoo to Columbia Rd. is the real thing..