The Gold Coast does have some incredible riding, and the climbs...holy smokes.
I'd say 8000 to 10000 is a lot of climbing, and I am just a cyclist.

Just use metric at all times...its a piece of piss then

There is a good one in Austin this Saturday (11/7/13) - Tour das Hugel. ~110 miles, with 10K-13K feet of climbing. The hills are short but steep, with quite a few with grades over 15%, some approaching 20%. This the hardest ride I've ever done.
Ride site:
http://damicoaustin.com/hugel/

The deathride is this saturday so I'll get to see if it's really as hard as they say.

I hear that the event is really nicely done and that the whole community gets behind it.

In general the 100 foot per mile rule can be a good gauge, but for me the really nasty climbing days is more a matter of how much climbing there is where it gets so steep that I'm forced to push more power than I normally would given the duration of the ride.

For example, I can do a 5 mile climb that's pretty steady at 6% and just keep chugging along at 70-75% of FTP...and do that climb and descent over and over again. Doing that climb 5x is 7200' and 50 miles, which is a good workout, but unless I'm pushing myself to hold a certain wattage, I can do that ride without really going into the red...no different than if I chose to hold 70-75% of FTP for a given amount of time on the flats.

The really hard days for me is when I go climbing with a bunch of skinny fuckers who want to ride up 9-11% grades over and over again, even if there is some flat riding between climbs that "dilutes" the ft/mile ratio. In those cases I'm spending a ton of time in the red to keep my cadence above 65...and I'm absolutely shelled at the end with a much higher TSS.

I see up to 10 metre per km as flat
10-20m per km is rolling to hilly
20m-25m per km is very hilly
more than 25m per km is a lot of climbing!

I think big european mountain sportives usually end up being 4000-5500m over 130-180km, which usually puts them firmly in the top category.

Then you would not have enjoyed what i did last week - rode through the Austrian Alps for 7 days. Turned out to be about 400 miles and 50,000 feet of climbing with much of it in the 10-15% range and several parts in the 16-20% range. We've also done the French Alps and Italian Dolomites and this was by far our hardest trip. Next up will be the Pyrenees - probably next summer.

This one is Switzerland is also quite nice, also has different options. The hardest one is 172miles and 23000feet (273/7031).

http://www.alpenbrevet.ch/routes

I've always classified > 100ft / 1mile as a "day in which I climbed".

The best part about being in Boulder is that we can climb if we want, but we don't have to climb. That's what makes Boulder a special place to train. Many riders in the area have probably never climbing over 1,000 ft, others rarely less.

E.g.
Saturday I went from 8800ft to 12,400ft in 11 gravel miles. (5,500 ft Total climbing in 34 miles) = One Long Sustained Climb
Tuesday I went west and did 5,600ft climbing in 42 gravel miles (5 or so different climbs)
Last night I went North-East and did 22miles with 700ft on my mountain bike. (Flat)

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All the guys in Dallas i see avg like 2mph faster then me on strava and i don't normaly see them go over 2k of climbing on rides either. In Austin you have to be pushing pretty hard to get over 20-21 mph avg on rides.

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This is a monster

I thought the mt blanc circumnavigation wss the toughest at 330/9000

I did an Olympic distance race the other day and over the 24miles it was 2640ft of climb and that was pretty brutal.

I just did a very similar olympic...25.4 miles 2435ft. It is less about it being physically hard and more about it being difficult to get into a rhythm so speed just gets killed, which makes it a mental grind. I agree with other posters that 1k/10 miles is my standard but rolling vs. big climbs definitely plays a roll. The only HC I have done is Mt. Hood. The route I took was 25 miles and just short of 5000ft. Other than a couple steep sections near the end the climb was totally reasonable because you could pretty much pick a gear and never have to shift.

My race was not a roller, it was steep climbs, so it really killed speed. On the bike the fastest person who was a pro could only pull off 23mph, with 3 pro-level amateurs in the 19.5-20mph range.

Agree though that you could easily if it was laid out right to have a roller at 1k/10m.

Here in Kansas a typical Century has 4,000 to 5,000 feet of climbing so I consider that to be normal. So "a lot" to me would be 6,000 feet or more. What is considered "a lot" will be based on perspective. We had a 70.3 race in Lawrence KS for a few years and the climbing for that 56 miles was around 2,500 feet or so. People visiting from FL, TX and other places with flat terrain would be "shocked" of how hilly KS was. "I thought Kansas was flat" would be a common comment.

I rode just under 30 miles last night and that ride had 1,300 feet of climbing which is pretty typical.