Category Archives: SF Bay

Pescadero/Tunitas Creek Road

Distance: 51-mile loop
Elevation gain: 5900 ft (RWGPS)

(A Best of the Best ride)

(Update: the recent Stage Road construction is completed and the road is now open.  jr)

About a quarter of this route is covered thoroughly in words and pictures at toughascent.com, enough to give you the look of the ride.

Before we begin, let me raise two red flags.  First, as several commenters make clear below, many people simply won’t ride Skyline Blvd because of the danger from car traffic.  I’ve never found it problematic (nerve-wracking, yes, dangerous, no), but it’s certainly one of the most hazardous roads in Bestrides.  Second, there are differing opinions about the quality of the road surface on Tunitas Creek Rd.  Two commenters below say it’s been recently repaved and now “sucks.”  I haven’t ridden the new surface yet, but it looks to be a smooth chipseal, which some people hate and some don’t mind.  I asked a rider doing the route how the surface was for riding and he said it was superb.  So I stand by the original route, but if either issue worries you, you can try the route in the Shortening the route section below, which avoids both while retaining most of the good stuff.

This ride is one of the harder rides in Bestrides—50 miles, none of them flat, and almost  6000 ft. of vert.  It’s a big climb through forest that’s as pretty as forest gets, then a leg up and down along the ridge spine down the middle of the San Francisco Peninsula, with a stop-over at an iconic California hippie/biker cafe, then one of the great descents in California and Oregon.  The ridge leg isn’t an A-level ride, because it’s straight and trafficky with no shoulder, but you’re going to have to do it to get to that descent, so what the hell.

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