The mountains America races up
4 on the map · 1 more worldwide ·
Checked
One road, one morning a year. A mass start at the bottom, a timing mat several thousand feet up, and usually a volunteer committee with a folding table and a results sheet going back decades.
The oldest is on Mount Blue Sky, first run in 1962 and named since 1981 for Bob Cook, who won it five times and died at twenty-three. Pikes Peak's race climbs the same road the cars have used since 1916. Haleakalā's Cycle to the Sun runs fifty-eight kilometres from the beach to ten thousand feet, which is the largest paved ascent on Earth done against a clock.
Mount Washington is the strange one. Bicycles are banned from its road every other day of the year, so the race is not the fastest way up the mountain. It is the only way up.
The roads, by the age of their race
Mount Blue Sky (from Echo Lake) Bob Cook Memorial, since 1962The highest paved road in North America, topping out at 14,130 feet, and the American reference test for racing at altitude: the hill climb first run in 1962…
Pikes Peak Highway The Broadmoor Cycle to the SummitSpencer Penrose's 1915 tourist road, made famous by its auto hill climb and fully paved only in 2011, the year bike racing arrived: the Broadmoor Cycle to th…
Mount Graham (Swift Trail, AZ-366) Arizona state championshipArizona's hardest road climb by PJAMM's rating, and its state hill-climb championship for more than four decades: 5,689 feet of gain the race bills as the th…
Haleakalā (sea to summit) Cycle to the SunWidely billed as the longest paved climb on earth: 58 km from the beach at Paia to 10,023 feet, the shortest ride anywhere from sea level to 10,000.
Not yet on the map
Verified members outside our covered regions — each joins the map when its region does.
- Mount Washington Auto Road Paved to the summit in 2022 and closed to bicycles every day except the August hill climb and one July event, which makes it the only one here you cannot simply go and ride.
The Mount Blue Sky race did not run in 2025. The road was closed for reconstruction, the first non-weather cancellation in decades, and it reopened in May 2026 under timed-entry reservations. That is the quiet risk with all of these: they depend on one road staying open and a small committee staying willing, and the distance between an event that has run for sixty years and an event that has quietly stopped is one cancelled edition and a website nobody updated.