I apologise if I gave you false hope that the climbing was over when the road split in Kyancutta at the end of stage 346: stage 348 sticks another couple of hundred feet of elevation on top of that, despite managing to descend over five hundred feet on the stage. Right now, it seems that the only way is (still) up.
However before the pain kicks in, there’s a fabulous five mile descent to look forward to, straight out of the pen. Okay there’s a half mile climb off the line but that’ll be gone in a flash: just concentrate of the descent that follows before reality kicks in.
The descent finishes at the junction to Kyimba, and that’s where the pain starts. The climb is eight miles long and throws up four hundred feet of ascent, passing by Panitya at ten miles before topping out between the dirt road junctions to Caralue and Eekiddaw at thirteen miles.
After that the Eyre Highway bends right, passing to the north of the Caralue Bluff Conservation Park on a descent that bottoms out at seventeen miles ahead of a another climb up to the finish: okay that final climb ends half a mile short of the line but it’ll still leave some lactic acid in your legs if you fancy going for it. The finish line is just after the junction south on the Bulumbah Kinnard Road, and strangely for the remote South Australian outback, it’s tarmac!
Distance: 22 miles / 35 kilometres
Ascent: 633 feet / 193 metres
RGT Magic Road: fS0s1sDyLaKe
Max elevation: 821 ft
Min elevation: 426 ft
Total climbing: 633 ft
Total descent: -555 ft
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