You’ve waited a long time for this, but finally, here’s a stage with more descent in it than climbing. Yes it’s still got nearly nine hundred feet of climbing in it, but it drops by almost twice that amount to end the stage at three thousand two hundred feet, and with just six stages to go to Beijing (and virtually sea level) the next few stages bode well for your legs.
As ever, the route is either south, east or south east, and this one’s almost exclusively south east. The rollout is downhill for a mile and a half, and the pace should be fast and furious, but by the time you pass Eerdong town at two miles, you’ll be onto the longest climb of the stage that ends at the highest elevation of the stage. The climb is three hundred feet over six miles and it crests the summit two miles after the intersection that leads north to Shangyi County and south to Qahar Youyi Qianqi.
The good news is that once the road goes over the top, the descent is both longer and more pronounced that the climb, losing over six hundred feet in seven miles past Xinghe and Chengguan Town to the junction of the X565 route that heads north/south from the Jingzang expressway and the bike route that runs alongside it.
From there to the finish, which is nine miles, the route is up, down, up, down in roughly equal measures of a couple of miles apiece. The road climbs two hundred feet to the start of the long right hander at eighteen miles, then loses all of that elevation during the course of the bend before regaining it by the end of it at twenty miles. But thereafter it’s a downhill run to the finish over a meandering right/left/right course to finish the stage at three thousand two hundred feet, just a hundred and twenty miles from Beijing.
Distance: 24 miles / 38 kilometres
Ascent: 876 feet / 267 metres
RGT Magic Road: JG49X2rArFTC
Max elevation: 3971 ft
Min elevation: 3262 ft
Total climbing: 877 ft
Total descent: -1576 ft
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