Brentani’s Cycling Blog

and I’ve done the Koppenberg at least 4 times, before it was re-paved, so I should know. On my way home from a ride today I decided to check out Bowen, a small street off of Benefit that runs parallel to Jenckes. I had seen it before and thought it was a shame that it was a dead-end street, since it had huge cobblestones, and it would otherwise resemble a tough Flemish climb. But a few days ago, I happened to look up while driving by and noticed that it looked like there was a sidewalk connecting the end of Bowen to Pratt, the cross street running parallel to Benefit. Today, I turned onto Bowen went about 10 feet and came to a dead stop on the cobbles. It was at this point that I realized that my pedals which had been getting progressively stickier throughout the whole ride, were not going to let go of my feet. I fell over sideways and decided not to try it today. Instead I decided to come back with a camera and I took a bunch of pictures of the climb. This thing is ridiculous. Not only is it steep, it has cobblestones that make the old Koppenberg look like a “royal carpet”. Bowen St. starts at Main St., just like the longer Jenckes, so if one were to attempt the climb, you would start there, with a nice steep (but paved) section. Immediately after crossing Benefit the fun begins. Stay to the right as you go up the climb and just before the cobbles stop, hop over to the sidewalk and cross over to Pratt Street. You really aren’t done climbing yet, so take a left. After an easy gradual section, take a right onto Jenckes and ride up the top section of Jenckes. Here is the veloroutes map. I put in one picture which is a cropped version of the brick wall at the top section with the sidewalk. I’m not sure if this is a good way to measure, but the image is 152×499. If we assume that that is a fairly accurate description of the height gained over the distance, the gradient for that section would be 30%. I tend to believe it. I was thinking about including this in the soon-to-be-revived Euro-Tuesdays, but as Andy said today, it would probably be better named “let’s go break some carbon frames day”. I’ll let you know if I summon the courage to try it again.