My childhood hill...19.9% Grade

I guess I know why, in my 40's, I took to cycling like a natural.

I just mapped my street on Red Mountain in Birmingham Alabama. .13 miles rising 135 feet - 19.9% Grade.:eek::eek: We used to "criss cross" to climb it. We used to skate board down it as well (and that explains some of my elbow scars)

I guess now I really understand why my car only got 8 mpg as well.

As some have doubted the existence of paved steep grades in the past, zip code 35222 - 12th Ave South rising from 52nd Street to Clairmont Avenue

How exactly did you map this, by riding it? Just curious. I can't wait to take my Garmin home and ride - I'm from Pittsburgh and like you, as a kid I used to ride up some massive hills, usually with the criss cross method. Rode down the hills on darn near anything with wheels, including sitting on a rollerskate - clearly my butt was smaller back then, as now I'd need a few skates under it. :)

I was born and raised in Pittsburgh too (my parents still live in Fox Chapel) but I remember learning to ride a bike. My friend said she would teach me. I got on her bike at the top of a big big long hill. She pushed me off and down I went! I was only 9 and I loved it until it was time to turn at the bottom of the hill. I paniced and instead of turning left I kept on going straight. My friend was yelling hit the brakes! What brakes? Where are the brakes? Old school bike with the pedal brake. Anyway, I hit a 2 foot high cement wall and over I went bike and all about 8 feet! Thank goodness for 9 year old bones! Except for a few scatches I was fine. My friend reached me and asked me if I was okay and I said I'm fine I want to do it again! That hill was 10% grade!

Kids! Today at 54 I doubt I would do something like that if I did not know how to ride!

How ironic, Birmingham is the Pittsburgh of the South. But all the steel mills were on the relatively flat west side of town.

I used mapmyride to quench my initial curiousity. Silver and I said that we would try to ride it next time we pass through on the way to the beach!

How did you calculate the grade? Did the mapping site do it? I'm impressed if you did it! I used the Pythagorean Theorem and got 20.06%. If you had made a mistake and used the .13 miles as the horizontal distance instead of the hypotenuse, you would have been off a bit and calculated it at around 19.66%. I can't wait for someone in my geometry class to say "yeah, and who else will ever use this besides you?" I'll say "Why Mr. Silver used it in November!":D

By the way, that's an impressive hill!

Honestly, I relied on the mapmyride distance and I don't know if that was horizontal or not...but it's a short distance. I also relied on their ascent calculation. Personally I would have guessed it was higher...

My calculation was 135 feet of ascent divided by .13 mile.

After a horzontal run, the final climb is about a 40 foot climb over 100 feet. This is one of those hills that you couldn't see over as you crested it in a car (and in 1972, our friends car couldn't crest it without a running start and all the kids leaning forward)