Chuckanut Drive: Bellingham to Blanchard
18 miles of State Route 11 hugging the sandstone cliffs of the Puget Sound coast between Bellingham and Blanchard, nicknamed "Washington's Big Sur." Narrow two-lane road with forest on one side and water below on the other; twisty and technical in places rather than a fast sweeper.
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Watch for rockslides and for other cars cutting corners on the narrow, cliff-hugging sections. Gets notably crowded on weekends. Check current access · Reviewed 2026-09-23
Planning the drive
Chuckanut runs 16 counted bends over 17.9 miles, a lower density than its "twisty" reputation suggests — the difficulty here isn't corner count, it's exposure: a narrow two-lane road cut into sandstone cliffs with forest on one side and Puget Sound directly below on the other, and blind corners where other drivers cut the line. That combination is what earns the Big Sur comparison, not sheer bend count. Motorcycle Roads: Chuckanut Drive
Watch for rockslides on the cliff sections, and expect the road to be genuinely crowded on weekends rather than lightly used — this is a well-known drive close to Bellingham, not a hidden one. A weekday run gets you a meaningfully different road.
Roads to connect
Driving notes updated .
Road shape
- Length
- 17.9 mi
- Bends
- 16
- Switchbacks
- 3
- Bends per mile
- 0.9
- Turning per mile
- 113°
- Curviest rank
- 151of 160
Measured from the OpenStreetMap centreline at a 20 m sampling step — road shape only, not a safety or speed judgement. How bends are counted.
Elevation
- Total climb
- 1,165ft
- Climb per mile
- 65ft
- Highest point
- 243ft
- Steepest grade
- 3.8%
Sampled every 100 m from USGS 10 m elevation data, a public-domain federal dataset. Total climb counts vertical change in both directions, so it does not depend on which way you drive. How elevation is measured.
Speed limits
Varies
Unverified
Check posted signs along the road.
No reliable posted limit was found for this selected section. Follow current signs.
Posted signs always govern. How speed evidence is handled.
Sources
Difficulty 2/3 (Winding) is our editorial rating of width, bends and sightlines; “Technical” describes character, not a target speed. Full method. Identified from:
- Motorcycle Roads: Chuckanut Drive
- Wikipedia: Washington State Route 11
- OpenStreetMap road data (24 ways in this trace)
Reviewed 2026-09-23. The trace shows selected road sections, not a navigation route.
Roads nearby
Distances are approximate straight lines between road centers, not driving distances or direct connections.