It is indeed a very tough climb. However, the CRCA's fact checker must be on vacation because the actual stats are 1.9 miles long and 1250 vertical feet.

There have been club rides there in the past, although none yet this year.

It's located in the southern Catskills a few miles east of Grahamsville. It's about a 100 mile round trip from P'keepsie train station:
X Hudson
R 9W
L 44/55
L 209
R 55
R 55A
R Sundown (Rt 153/46/42)
L Sugar Loaf
L Glade Hill

Glade Hill has a bite, but if you can get past the farm house, its not too bad after that. Gearing is everything. A moderately strong ride with a 39X27 will have no trouble with Glade Hill. I have also climbed it with a 39X25, no problem. A 23 or less, needless suffering. For most, a triple would be ideal.

"I don't deny the brutality of any of the climbs listed here, but if you ever get to the West Coast, I have a few others to recommend, for slightly different reasons.

The road up Mount Diablo (you pick it up in a town called Danville) gets you up some 4,000 feet in 11 miles. If you're good at this sort of thing, you now have enough info to figure the grade. It's probably nowhere near as steep as some East Coast roads, but the thing about it is, it goes on...and on...and on...and on...without relief. Think of it as about 16 Churchills in a row, nonstop.

Since the road winds and switchbacks around a mountain quite a few times, you get breathtaking scenery and changes of climate, depending which face of the mountain you're on. When you start, you can sometimes see deer at eye level and hawks making those ""lazy circles in the sky."" By the time you get to the top, the deer are long gone and the hawks are circling below you.

The weather starts out temperate. Then, as you come around toward the Livermore Valley, you get hot air blasts off the desert. Another third of a turn or so and you get cool damp blasts off San Francisco Bay and from some spots, a glimpse of the water around Antioch. Then you're perpendicular to the San Ramon Valley and the weather's temperate again. And then back to the hot blast of Livermore...and so on.

Alas, the top of the mountain, while it offers spectacular vistas, is decorated with a parking lot and a phone booth. But don't try to get away from it all too fast. If you attempt an unbraked, 11 mile, switchback downhill, you'll soon pick up enough momentum to go flying out of control off the side of the mountain. (No guard rails!)

But if you keep your hands on your brakes, after a few miles your rims will grow so hot that your inner tubes will explode. So go a mile or so feathering the brakes until you come to a nice piece of scenery. You should then have a drink, wait for the rims to cool down a bit, and then continue. I'm a slow climber. As I recall, the 11 very steep uphill miles took me about three hours. But the descent, which theoretically should have been a piece of cake, took an agonizing hour and a half.

I've always wanted to try the grandaddy of all bicycle climbs in California — Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, birthplace and birthroad of Bikeus Mountainous Americanus. Unfortunately, when you get there, there's so much automotive tourist traffic, including cars and trucks lugging wide, road-hogging house trailers, that I lost heart and settled for the automobiile ride.

But even in a car, it looks like one mean mother of a climb.

Alpe de Huez, anybody?"

"The steepest paved road in the world is in New Zealand, at 38 percent gradient. Take a look at the picture at http://scasagrande.tripod.com/NZ3b/."

Thanks for the pictures and the added commentary. I'd forgotten about that sudden steep increase in grade near the top. I don't remember it being quite so long, but it's been ten years, and my memory may be playing tricks on me.

I did the ride on a rented mountain bike in 1993 and again in 1994. I'm now in my 60s, was never a very good hill climber, and I'm uncertain whether I'll ever get to do it again, even at my snail's pace in a mountain bike granny gear.

The pictures are great, and recall sections of the road as I remember them. I do wish you had a shot of the hawks circling below camera level, and of the view out toward the Antioch bridge.

I must, however, beg to disagree about the road up Mount Tamalpais. Maybe, because whenever I'm there I'm a tourist, I've done it at peak touring hours. But I can clearly recall several climbs and descents of Tam by automobile when I had my heart in my mouth, coming around curves and not knowing when suddenly some big monster of a housetrailer would come swinging through the curve from the opposite direction. On a bike? I admire your courage, as well as your climbing strength and lung capacity. To me, some stretches of the road look awesomely steep. I accept that the High Sierra can be worse. But I ain't never been there. I have been up Mount Tam many times, and that's as steep as I care to get.

Here's a 38% climb in the Alps.

http://www.cycling.uk.net/alps/east/vedla1.htm