Same old, same old. Water features and hills on an east/north easterly trajectory on repeat. Stage 678 runs north of Georgian Bay above the top of Lake Huron in south Ontario on the road to what will eventually become Montreal and hence onward to Halifax, Nova Scotia. It’s one of those annoying stages that offers no flat road and inevitably for a stage with around 20 mini peaks and troughs, you’ll soon get the feeling that the road is forever going uphill: the elevation profile says it is by fifty feet, end to end.
The rollout is immediately up/down, followed by another before three miles are on the clock. So perhaps the best way to document the stage is to say that the significant peaks are at one mile, three miles, five miles, twelve miles, eighteen miles and twenty miles, with plenty of smaller peaks along the way. The troughs, of course, are between them all.
There are three interconnected lakes north of Highway 17 at three miles and the stream that flows from the eastern one crosses under the highway en route to Grassy Lake further south.
The first significant strategic landmark is at Denlou at five miles where Highway 4 heads north to Fairbank Lake. A mile after that, on the lumpy descent down to Charles Lake, Highway 17 shoots off to the left, heading north east, while the ATW route branches right on the Old Highway 17 into Whitefish at eight miles. after crossing McCharles Lake at nine miles, the old highway runs parallel with the new one past Simon Lake at thirteen miles and Mud Lake at fifteen miles: the two are connected by Junction Creek.
The old Highway 17 is aka Highway 55 as it heads on east, and at Mikkola, at eighteen miles, at the top of the biggest climb of the stage, and indeed its highest point, Highway 55 crosses over the new Highway 17 and takes the northern route around Kelly Lake while H17 takes the southern route around the other side. The finish of the stage is at the right hander where Power Street (aka Highway 30) branches off north into Copper Cliff while the Old Highway 17 continues on north east to Greater Sudbury.
Distance: 21 miles / 34 kilometres
Ascent: 623 feet / 190 metres
RGT Magic Road: r2Rgqaxeuw4R
Max elevation: 854 ft
Min elevation: 749 ft
Total climbing: 624 ft
Total descent: -575 ft
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