New heights indeed

If Bicycling's climbing special makes cycledork want to take a nap, Procycling's "50 Greatest Climbs" from the January issue makes me want to hide under the bed. Four rides in the United States make it: Brasstown Bald in Georgia (No. 46), Mount Evans in Colorado (No. 42), Flagstaff Road from Boulder, Colo. (No. 33) and Mount Washington in New Hampshire (No. 13). It was surprising that only Mount Evans and Mount Washington made Bicycling's unranked, alphabetical-by-state list. Appropriately for a magazine published in a country with a longer history in international cycling than the United States, 43 of the other 46 climbs are European (the other three are in Colombia, Australia and Malaysia). Most are legendary even among those of us who have trouble distinguishing between a genuine hill and a false flat. While I've had my own successful badass, albeit unlisted, uphill adventures in Colorado, I am naively and probably hilariously curious enough to want to answer this question for myself: how hard can Mont Ventoux really be?