like Bwgride, i use Mapmyride and zoom down to a mile or less to get the skinny on sections i'm interested in. hasn't let me down yet.

i settle down with the computer, get some chips and salsa, and enjoy the experience. it may take a while depending on my route. BTW, i usually have a google maps tab on my browser open too, just to get a perspective and flip back and forth between the road map mode and the 'earth' view mode. lot's a fun.

I'm pretty sure I understand where you're coming from. I tend to agree that there needs to be some degree of improvisation in order to have a proper adventure, so to speak. A rough plan with room for unexpected adventures is perfect.

The somewhat overly dramatic warning in my original response to your query was because I know from experience many people come unprepared to the Mojave. If you don't respect it, the desert will bite you. I've seen people suffer heat stroke or worse just from an easy 2 mile hike. If you understand and prepare, you should be fine, if a little uncomfortable at first. I suggest you carry more water with you than you think you need, as well as a good electrolyte powder. 35 celsius would be a cool day, 45 celsius is more typical in summer. The Mojave is very beautiful though. I go there all the time.

I haven't read the ACA guides or maps, but I was born and raised in California, and have cycled, backpacked and camped pretty much all over the state. I know it well. The roads here don't tend to have extreme gradients, though of course there are exceptions. I'd worry more about traffic, shoulders, water and heat stroke than the actual difficulty of the climbs.

If you envision riding across Los Angeles as fun, I suggest you plan your adventure to start on a weekend morning, when the traffic isn't so bad. I'd have to think about it, but one reasonable route would be to go north to Venice, admire the cliched california beach, and then take Venice Boulevard across to downtown LA - it has a bike lane, and then follow the river north.

Yep, if you'd read my original post here (no.4) you see that you and I are basically n the same page, and very happy to go with what can be inferred from decent road maps. I still plan trips that way, though I now might check google street views to get a sense of what a road might be (lane width, shoulder, etc.). Otherwise I take roads as I find them.

But the OP seemed very concerned about encountering steep climbs, so I figured contour maps might be of help to him.

gotcha. Its funny, but as someone who uses the internet all the time, I still really like having a paper map in front of me.

I had to laugh, about 4 years ago I went back to a Central American country that I had lived in about 25-30 years ago to visit friends and took my bike on this trip to visit my friends. I visited one of my friends who is my age, and has teenage and young adult kids, and when I biked up to where she lives on a mountain side, her oldest son helped me plan a route to get to the next family I was visiting. He opened up Google Earth, or google maps, bing bang boom, shows me his suggested route, shows it to me from the side to give me an idea of the elevation changes, and all that. I didnt know how to do this, but it was great having his suggested route and to have an idea of the topography--so the old gringo seemed pretty old school compared to him. We jotted down the names of the villages I'd be going through during the day, and rough distances involved, and I still got to have some surprises and unexpected stuff, plus had fun asking people for directions and stuff, so for me it was a nice mix of using technology, but not too much. It was a pretty up and down day, so tiring, but I guess its because I dont shy from lots of climbing, it was fine being somewhat in the dark about how much up and down was involved.

that said, it is pretty darn cool to be able to plot a route in programs and get a fairly good idea of how many metres of climbing and descending. I've just done so little of this, so am not that confident of how to use the programs properly.

Yep, and I still prefer paper books (the batteries never die).

My main objection to on-line maps is screen size. On a typical paper map I'm looking at a 24-36" piece of paper. My trip may be 20" long, but I still get plenty of details. A screen map is small format, so I can either see the whole trip in a small scale, or I can enlarge the scale for details but lose sight of the big picture.

These days I'm a pretty heavy user of google maps, because it's so easy. But I'm always working back and forth between the big picture and the details. Not that long ago, I was planning a route, and there was a fairly large area with no roads, meaning I needed to go around it. I kept dialing in closer, and FINALLY got to the point where a dirt connecting road going exactly where I needed appeared. Had I not looked more closely, I wouldn't have known it was there.

BTW- does anybody know how to get Google maps to print the map on a full 8.5x11 sheet of paper. Whenever I try, it uses about 1/3 of the paper, and wastes the rest on other stuff.

If we focus just on the east to west section of Tanglewood (from the 90 degree bend to just past Riverview st), rather than what I posted earlier, MMR shows one section of Tanglewood having a grade of 27 to 29%, so that part does seem to be very steep. Tough climb.

Very very preliminary. Starting on the basis of the ACA'S Sierra Cascades route. We may get underway at Lake Isabella and ride the SC up to Ellensburg (WA) and then Seattle.

I'll look into the course profile before either committing to the idea or raising issues with the kids.

(wrt profile -- I find it useful to obtain a gpx file from a preliminary gMaps route. I'll run the data on an Excel spreadsheet to locate critical points -- just did a test run with data from a killer-hill near where I live, that I was unable to climb loaded. Turns out that the gradient reaches 30% (!) and is solidly above 15% on 400 meters or so. Even pushing the bike was challenging. It is these kinds of obstacles that concern me the most. Also wanted to point out that the data used by gpsVizualiser is terrific.)

And thank you for pointing this out. I was under the impression that the desert wouldn't be a concern because I thought it started much more to the east than it actually does. You made me look more closely at the map and weather data. Renting a van to drive the to Lake Isabella does seem to make more sense. Thanks again.

The Android app Soviet Military Maps, cycle layer shows contour lines (works in USA, I do not know about other countries). Even when you specify feet for units, the topo lines appear to be metric. I would never want to plan a route with that type of map on a small tablet or phone, but it did come in handy when I rode part of teh Pacific Coast route so that I knew what the next day would be like and where the biggest worst hills would be.

If you have not worked with topo maps before, it can take some time to get used to them. But after a while you can look at a map and know if ithe grade is going to be tough or not.

are you in Quebec City or elsewhere in the province of Quebec? If Montreal, I'd be curious of where the 30% is.
I have no idea what is the steepest gradient I've ridden up loaded, or unloaded for that matter. I rode up and down Burke Mtn in Vermont (I think) where on this webpage it says it has max gradients of 18%.

https://www.northeastcycling.com/Mtn_Climbs.html

I was able to ride up it, mostly unloaded, (prob one pannier) but I know in Costa Rica I've not been able to ride up a short section that must have been 25 or 30, just stupid steep. I was out of shape a bit and was getting over a bad cold, but it was just nutso steep, even going back and forth across the road I couldnt do it.

Latin America has a lot of wacko gradients, and would be a real challenge for heavy touring. I have family who lives in Wales, and the town where they live, there are numerous "1 in 5" and "1 in 4" hills right in town , 20 and 25%. Tough hills.

I'd have to say, being able to know with a reasonable amount of accuracy, the gradients of climbs would be neat--and like you say Gauvins, to be able to compare things to climbs that you know you can do, or are at your limit for a given bike+load weight.

the times I've played with my smart phone to do gps tracks, I've never been entirely happy with the gradients shown when I put the files into google earth and bring it up as a profile and all that. Played with this stuff just a bit a few years ago then stopped.

These can be fun on rides

Sky Mounti Inclinometer - Tools & Accessories | Adventure Cycling Association

You're welcome. It's the western edge and somewhat transitional, but very much the desert. Use that little yellow guy in google maps.

I think renting a van and driving to Lake Isabella would be a much more relaxing and enjoyable way to begin your adventure. Maybe even car camp in the Angeles National Forest the first night, to get familiar with your camping gear.

I wouldn't be at all surprised. It definitely is the steepest thing I've ever ridden on or for that matter...driven on. I knew I was thinking going up it that there was no way in lleh that I would consider riding down the drop no matter how good of brakes I had. It isn't all that long of a stretch but the speed you could pick up on the descent is mind numbing with a must make 90 degree turn where the grade starts to decrease...no thank you. I'll climb it even fully loaded...did that this summer, but I wouldn't descend it.

Here is a look at the profile of a Sierra Cascades segment. I took the lat-long-elevation data from a GMaps route run through GPSVisualizer to get the GPX. The distance and elevation difference has been computed between each data triplet (more than 8,000) and the result displayed below. (Elevation in blue, gradient in red),



Similar procedure for a segment of Eurovelo 6 (but legend is reversed -- elevation in red and gradient in blue)



I've analyzed a couple of hilly courses with which I am familiar. Too early to tell for certain, but as of now my impression is that sustained gradients above 10% with a fully loaded touring bike exceeds our curent capabilities, so it looks like we'll ride EV6 next Summer after all

I'm not that detailed. I look at topo maps and go from there. I figure if a car can drive it, i can pedal it. Got low gears? A sense of adventure? Do people actually plan out every turn and road taken? I look to get a sense but sometimes you miss a turn or a bridge is closed or construction. And pack lighter. I find a double breakfast will best all hills encountered. This summer I plan on maybe touring 5 days from the Boston, MA area to up and around the Lakes area of Central NH. I expect to encounter some hills.

Try Ride With GPS, which gives elevation profiles. Picking a starting point and ending point will automatically plot out a decent route, which you can tweak by adding waypoints.

Well, I am not experienced enough to be categorical here, but based on the data I looked at, sites like MMR average gradients to such an extent as to hide the most critical sections. (ex. one km at 8% with 200m at 25% will show as a section with a (benign) 10% gradient. On some sections, the terrain may be such that there are many many problematic sections. Although it may look like elevation gain is a critical metric, steep gradients are much more problematic.

We'd be two adults that there wouldn't be such fuss. But with kids...

hmmm.... are you aware of the tribulations of Vesta team? (a Volvo 65' that has participated in the previous Volvo ocean race). They hit a reef in "the middle of the ocean", east of Madagascar. Most likely their route had been planned at a small scale, so small that the tiny reef didn't show on their screen. Incredible pictures. But the really mind boggling thing is the root cause of the accident. (see the official report here). Quite incredible that no-one ran a large scale analysis. Quite incredible that large-scale analysis is not a mandatory feature of routing softwares.

So yes, it is great to have "the big picture" but if it is not fine grained enough, it can actually lead you to a false sense of security. (writing this, I realize that bike touring is unlikely to lead to dramatic situations -- please keep in mind that I am trying to figure what is a reasonable route for our tribe.)

FWIW -- I ran the data for the entire EV6-EV13-Istanbul route. Took a couple of hours (minutes for the actual charting -- more time was spent on locating GPS traces.) I would like to add that my understanding of the Sierra Cascades profile may have been caused by crummy routing. Will try to find the definitive tracks before we make a final decision on this.

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on a related note -- anyone knows how to calculate the maximum achievable gradient? I mean, a cyclist can deliver a finite amount of watts. So this figure has to be determined by gears and weight (air resistance not being crucial when you travel at 6kph (again, that will be useful to achieve a fair balance between our (low watt) pre-teen and (average watts and loaded) adults.

One benefit of preplanning is not running into road construction and having to do a major reroute. Some like when they close Memorial Bridge in Portsmouth, NH a couple of years ago can add 20 miles to your day without trying. By using Ridewithgps I can generally see where sections of road are closed as they won't let me route through those sections. I can try my darnedest but it won't let me go there. I can then go to the state highway dept website and see what the story is. Pretty much always the road is closed when rwgps won't let me ride through. Admittedly there is a stretch right now here not far from me that it won't let me route through that I ride through pretty much once a week. It was closed earlier this year but isn't closed now and they still haven't 'reopened the mapping' to the area.

Hi there Gauvins,
Its interesting, but you sound like you are either an engineer or a computer software sort of guy--I don't need to know but I do have a computer friend who tends to look at stuff in a very analytical way like this. I'm not meaning to be critical, and in fact I have often thought of how it would be neat to have an idea of what wattage I put out comfortably, and to relate this to a given gradient along with the specific bike+load weight (I often think of this while biking up Mount Royal here in Montreal along the paved Camilien Houde road, and people go by me rather quickly, but on bikes that weigh the same as my single pannier sometimes.

So what I want to say is that there really isnt any proper method to calculate these sort of variables, but realistically all you can do its to ride up similar hills to what you expect to encounter with stuff on your bike, and see if your gearing is low enough and how it is for you at a given steepness.
One other thing is that in the places I have biked the most, North America, France, the gradients on regular roads are generally not much more than 12-15%, and while you might encounter the odd short steeper section, you can't really expect to have the exact info on all places--but you can get out there and start to get a more realistic feel for how a given hill for you.
The 30% one you mentioned in QC is always going to be pretty rare, and unless you bike in Latin America or in England, on regular roads its very uncommon to see gradients like this.

So I guess the one thing we can help you with here is to give recommendations for gearing, for a given load weight, and at least you can get some good ideas on that end, but really, you and the "gang" need to get out and regularly ride hills to get more prepared physically and psychologically. People who dont ride hills much often get psyched out by them, and while of course your gearing is a very important factor, a certain mindset is good to develop as well.

I like and use the old saying, that "there is always another hill", and to just concentrate on a bit at a time while going up a long hill. Also, its completely fair to realize that if you or your family dont ride up hills that much, at first it will be tough, but we do get stronger over time.
That said, getting some impressions on weight/gearing from some of us that are experienced, will go a long way for you to be at least reasonably sure that the gearing on your bikes are suitable for what you want to do.

again though, that said, nothing substitutes getting out there and riding hills. You will get stronger over time and you will become more mentally prepared for a hard climb. You will also develop a feeling for what you can get up, and if you need to lower your gearing, for example.

Do realize as well that sometimes, you or the kids may have to get off and walk up a short steep section, but thats ok and not the end of the world. I personally dont like pushing a bike, but over the decades have gotten a much better idea of what gearing works for me for a given sort of road.

I feel its unrealistic to look for some sort of "calculator" that can give you a black and white number, but getting out and riding certain types of hills will very much help you get stronger with them, and to know how much load is too much (weigh your panniers and or the bike in total) and to see about changing the gearing on your bike (although that is something a number of us can tell you right away if you give us the info, wheel and tire size, chainrings, cassettes....)

cheers

I've used Ride With GPS, Google Maps, Garmin Connect, Basecamp and Map My Ride quite a bit, but I think Strava's new mapping tool beats them all.

Get Ready to Plan Your Route | Strava Route Builder + verification with Google Street Maps is the best I've found.

if there is something better, I'd love to know about it.

My training was indeed in applied mathematics (econometrics and market models). So yes, I tend to use numbers. I've updated the OP after finding almost exactly what I was looking for.

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You suggest that I ride hills similar to what I expect to encounter, but see, this is the problem -- I don't know what to expect. Here is what the ACA has to say about the Sierra Cascades route:

"Rolling". Contrast this with one of the first comments posted on the Sierra Cascades thread I started.

My "analysis" agrees with @staehp's comment.

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My drivetrain is 48-36-26 x 11-34 and there isn't much I can do to change the ratio. And as far as the load goes, I will have to carry gear and supplies for the whole family (we are ultralighters, so that means roughly 20kg). My wife will ride with our little one (so I can nag them, or vice versa

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Again, if it were just me, or my wife and I, I wouldn't have bothered. But pushing bikes uphill with a 5yo is not a fun way to spend a Summer (our little one will ride here own bike, hooked to a follow-me when she's had her fill -- pushing bikes would be a major annoyance).

So it now looks like EV6 is back.

Slick indeed -- I've charted Lake Isabella to Wawona. It is possible to slowly mouse-over the elevation profile to get the point-to-point gradient. I was able to find a 20%+ gradient somewhere between Piedra and Wawona. Would be even better if the main plot could be point-to-point gradient rather than elevation.

gauvins, your LHT with the stock 37mm wheels has a low gear of 21 gear inches with the stock 26 granny gear and the 34t cassette. If you changed the small front 26 chainring to a 24, it will bring your gearing down to 19.3, which would work very well also.
So when you do some trial runs with the more or less 20kg on the bike, you can see if you need lower.

I have toured a lot with about 20kg max, on bikes with about 21 gear inches, and for me that works generally fairly well, although having a bit lower is always appreciated sometimes, and has no downside, if you use it a few times then its appreciated, if you hardly ever use it, who cares, its still there and doesnt take away from your riding at all.

to change the 26 to a 24 is fairly inexpensive, if you have the simple tool to remove the crankset, and some allen keys, then its only the cost of a 24t chainring that fits the bolt pattern of your crank (which is a pretty standard size)

If you don't have the experience or the tools, a bike store would charge a small amount to make the change, would take 15mins. tops.

I'm glad to hear you are now thinking of the EV6, it sounds like a good family route, and not just for being less hilly, I'm thinking specifically of the shorter distances between villages, campgrounds etc etc.