Mountain Highway is a 18 km highway in Eastern Melbourne. Mountain Highway starts from Burwood Highway

Burwood Highway

Burwood Highway is a major transportation link with Melbourne's eastern suburbs. It begins in the suburb of Kooyong, Melbourne at the junction of the Monash Freeway as Toorak Road between Monash Freeway and Warrigal Road, and finishes in Belgrave, Victoria in the Dandenong Ranges...

  and runs through The Basin

The Basin, Victoria

The Basin is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 31 km east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Knox...

, then uphill to Sassafras

Sassafras, Victoria

Sassafras is a locality and township within Greater Melbourne beyond the Melbourne metropolitan area Urban Growth Boundary, 43 km east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the Shire of Yarra Ranges. At the 2006 Census, Sassafras had a population of 968...

. For most of its length it is dual carriageway, with 2 or 3 lanes in each Direction. From Burwood Highway

Burwood Highway

Burwood Highway is a major transportation link with Melbourne's eastern suburbs. It begins in the suburb of Kooyong, Melbourne at the junction of the Monash Freeway as Toorak Road between Monash Freeway and Warrigal Road, and finishes in Belgrave, Victoria in the Dandenong Ranges...

 to Forest Road in the suburb of The Basin, the highway is generally straight. From The Basin to Sassafras, the road narrows to a single carriageway, traversing the Dandenong Ranges National Park

Dandenong Ranges National Park

Dandenong Ranges National Park is in Victoria, Australia, 38 km east of Melbourne.Because the park is located in an urban area, the park has a long history of major problems with feral and roaming animals...

, eventually terminating at Mount Dandenong Tourist Road and is a challenging winding road and a popular cycling and motorcycling route for people in Melbourne.

1 in 20

The uphill section between The Basin and Sassafras is known in the Melbourne cycling community as the "1 in 20". Cyclists seeking to measure their time do so from the 60 km speed sign, just uphill from the shops in The Basin. Timing ends at the 60 km/h speed sign at Sassafras http://www.australiancyclist.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=2818. The 6.75 km climb, ascending 286 m is so named as most of the road climbs at a steady 5% (the average gradient is slightly less at 4.2% http://melbunicycling.wordpress.com/training/climbs/mt-dandenong/).