Distance: 15.6 out and back
Elevation gain: 2490 ft

(A Best of the Best descent)

This is another of those pure climbs out of the Wine Country valley floor. Bestrides has four of them: Pine Flat Road, Geysers Road, Cavedale Road, and this one. They are all peachy, they all climb through similar, moderately pretty scrub much of the time, and they’re all fairly long, hard climbs without being brutal (7-10%). Obviously I like them all. How to know which one to ride first? Here are some distinguishing features:

Geysers is the only loop among the four (though Cavedale and Ida Clayton can be made into one). Geysers and the loop version of Cavedale are the only two to include sweet flat valley riding. Geysers has a more varied contour than the others. Much of its road surface is rough, but readers tell me it’s been partially improved recently. It’s by far the longest, so it has by far the shallowest (easiest) climbing.

Pine Flat has the steepest pitches and has a nice flat break in the middle of the climb (the eponymous Pine Flat). It can’t be looped.

Cavedale and Ida Clayton have both been repaved recently and have glassy surfaces.

Cavedale goes up to a summit and down the back side, so you get a super-sweet roller coaster between the summit and the turn-around that is one of my favorite legs in the Wine Country.

Ida Clayton climbs steadily for 4 mi., then rolls and climbs mildly for another 4 mi. through beautiful woods on a road surface that ranges from OK to terrible. I think Ida Clayton’s descent is the best of the four.

Which one is the hardest? Here’s a quick look at the stats (very approximate) on the climbing segments only for the four rides:

Geysers: 22 miles, c. 180 ft/mile
Pine Flat Road: 10.6 miles, c. 340 ft/mile
Cavedale: 5.1 miles, c. 530 ft/mile
Ida Clayton: 4 mi, c. 620 ft/mile

As you can see, the shorter the ride the steeper the gradient. And sometimes averages lie—Pine Flat Rd. has some genuinely frightful pitches the others lack.

All four rides share the virtue of isolation: there’s really little reason for a car to be on any of them. Because Ida Clayton goes from Hwy 128 to Middletown, as does the much more car-friendly Hwy 29, you can expect exceptionally car-free riding. When I rode it, on the 8-mile ride in I met 0 vehicles. On the ride out I met two.

Ida Clayton Rd. heads straight up from Kellogg, an invisible community on Hwy 128, the highway that runs through St. Helena and Calistoga—think of it as a few miles north of Calistoga. This being flat agricultural land, there is roadside parking everywhere. The road climbs robustly and steadily, but never ferociously (nothing prolonged over 10%), for 4 miles, at first through pretty woods and then through typical Wine Country hillside scrub—not gorgeous but handsome in its way. The road is posted as “one-lane,” and it’s without shoulder, fog line, or center line, but it’s wide enough for two cars to pass, cautiously, and wide enough that the descent on the return is a pleasure. The road surface, recently redone, is flawless for the first 4 miles, then not so. The pitch is fairly constant but the road is rarely straight and there is a lot of variety in the curves. As you ascend, you start to get those grand vistas of Calistoga’s valley below.

Four miles in you hit a mini-summit and the ride changes completely. From now on you’re in pretty deciduous trees, the road contour wanders up and down easily, mostly up (there’s a noticeable pitch in the last 0.8 miles), and that glassy road surface soon turns into old, broken pavement that is at times really wretched. It’s more like mountain biking. Go for the scenery, or turn around at the mini-summit.

Eight miles in the road turns to dirt. If you continue, in 2.2 miles the pavement returns and in 3 total miles you emerge onto Hwy 29 at the southern outskirts of Middletown, from whence you can easily bop over to Harbin Hot Springs for a soak, then return to Kellogg via major connector Hwy 29. I’m told the dirt is rough and 29 is unpleasantly busy. For other loop options see Adding Miles below. But if you loop the ride that you’ll miss the Ida Clayton descent.

The climbs on Cavedale and Ida Clayton are almost indistinguishable, and the descent on Cavedale is iffy, so the descent on Ida Clayton should be equally iffy, but it isn’t. I guess the slight increase in road width makes all the difference, because this descent you can really carve. Hence the Best of the Best rating.

Shortening the ride: Ride to the mini-summit and turn around.

Adding miles: Our Pine Flat Rd. ride is 9 flat, rideable miles north on Hwy 128. The southern edge of our Geysers Rd. ride is a stone’s throw north of PFR.

If you want a loop route, are turned off by the traffic on Hwy 29, and are up for some miles, you can ride to the end of Ida Clayton, ride through Middletown, and take Butts Canyon Rd. to Pope Valley Rd. through Angwin, Deer Park, and Calistoga back to Kellogg (thanks, Brian). All very good riding, c. 56 miles.

If you want to ride alongside the vineyards on the valley floor, at the bottom of Ida Clayton you’re near the northern end of the Napa Valley Vine Trail, a bike trail that stretches (with gaps—it’s a work in progress) from Napa to Calistoga, usually within sight of the highway. The leg from St. Helena to Calistoga is brand new (as of 1/25) and particularly sweet.

Directly on the opposite side of Hwy 128 from the base of Ida Clayton is Franz Valley Rd., which introduces you to a delightful warren of pretty, largely flat roads—Franz Valley Rd., Franz Valley School Rd., Petrified Forest Rd., and all the others between Hwy 128 and Santa Rosa to the west. Feel free to wander. For more details, see the Adding Miles section of the Pine Flat Road post.

Distance: 23.5-mile loop
Elevation gain: 1980 ft

Occidental is an amazing cycling resource. Six roads head out of this little town, and each one of them is some degree of wonderful for riders. All 6 figure in a Bestrides route in one way or another. This route focuses on the roads to the northwest of town. It and Bittner Rd. (which is in our Coleman Valley Rd. ride) are the only ones with thrilling descents.

This ride comes with some caveats. The Bohemian Highway can be unpleasantly, dangerously trafficky. About a quarter of the miles on our loop have a bad case of Sonoma County Disease (i.e. have rough surfaces). And one leg of the loop is downright not fun to ride. But the other three quarters of the miles are glass, for all of those three quarters the scenery is as good as the area gets (which is, gorgeous), and if we deal with BH’s traffic issues it’s a descent to be remembered.

See the Occidental Loop ride notes for info on the town of Occidental itself.

The Bohemian Highway also goes the opposite direction, south, out of Occidental briefly and dead-ends at Freestone, and it’s a pleasant enough few miles, but we’re interested in the northern direction, from Occidental to Monte Rio, 6.3 mi of delicious descending to the Russian River. It’s never steep (2-5%), which sounds boring, but it isn’t—it serpentines sweetly, the pavement is glass, and you can really attack the hill, pedaling vigorously and carving the sweeping turns at 25+ mph. The scenery is the usual Occidental-area redwood gorgeousness. It’s really very nice.

But there’s the traffic. You want to carve those turns from the middle of the lane, and that’s hard to arrange. Bohemian Highway is a main route to the Russian River, which is a main access route to the coast, so it can get busy, and there’s really no room for you and cars at the same time—two small lanes, minimal shoulder, cars in a hurry to get to the beach. So you have to plan the ride for slack traffic. I did the ride on Sunday (terrible day), but waited until noon (good time), and had to deal with perhaps 6 cars passing me. I would think any weekday after 10 am and before 3 pm would be OK, and any weekend day between 11 am and 2 pm, and any day at 7 a.m.

Near the bottom of the descent the road forks, into Bohemian Highway on the R and the oddly named Main St. on the L (clearly signed). The two roads are within sight of each other on opposite banks of the creek. Take Main St.—the road surface is better, and it goes by Lightwave, a charming, unpretentious coffee/drinks/small-menu food shop run by a couple recently from Israel. Try to stop, at least for coffee or a drink—you’ll like it. There’s a bike rack in full view, so you can sit at an outside table and keep your eye on your bike.

Cross the river on the unmissable bridge and say hello and goodbye to Monte Rio, a town named by someone who apparently didn’t know that “monte” means “mountain”. Go R (under the friendly “Monte Rio Awaits Your Return” sign) onto River Rd., the road that follows the banks of the Russian River upstream, and ride it for 4.3 mi. to Guerneville. It isn’t fun. The traffic is constant, so you’re confined to the (largely spacious but debris-strewn) shoulder, the pavement is poor, and the neighborhood is generally shabby. Gentrification has yet to reach Monte Rio, which may be a blessing but doesn’t aid the riding.

You can bypass about half of the River Rd. leg by taking Old Monte Rio Rd., which parallels River Rd. just to the north, but it’s an adventure—the “road” is little more than a paved footpath and fairly decrepit. Check it out on Streetview (incredibly, it’s covered) before committing yourself to it.

Happily, Guerneville is a pleasant community with a good energy. Midtown, turn R onto Hwy 116 (called by some maps and my GPS “Pocket Canyon Highway”). Very soon, turn R. onto Mays Canyon Rd. and ride MCR to its end back on Hwy 116.

Mays Canyon used to be one of my favorite little rides, a car-free, secret back road offering pristine redwoods and splendid isolation. It still has some of that, especially in the first mile or so, but it also has, smack in the middle of it, a large community of run-down thrown-together dwellings with lots of signs telling you how unwelcome you are. With all that comes some traffic. And the road surface is bad. So ride it if you wish, or just stay on Hwy 116, which lacks Mays Canyon’s vices and virtues.

If you do Mays, go R on Hwy 116 (at the intersection there is no sign or any indication of where you are except for a hand-routered sign reading “Mays Canyon Rd.”). Everything is really good for the rest of the ride—the scenery is lovely, the traffic is light to non-existent, and the road surface is pristine.

Ride to Green Valley Rd. and go R onto Green Valley, which looks at the intersection like an afterthought but is really a well-established road. GVR goes up and down a steep little hill which is the steepest thing you’ll see on the ride (max pitch 12% briefly). Turn R onto Harrison Grade Rd.—I know, it’s very hard to leave Green Valley Rd., because it’s so very sweet, but Harrison is just as good.

Harrison Grade, as its name implies, is a climb—never as steep as Green Valley at its worst but more of it—2 miles of serious climbing with some 9-10% stuff. HGR runs you into Graton Rd., which runs quickly back into Occidental and provides the perfect cherry on this sundae—a brisk little descending slalom through perfect redwoods.

Shortening the ride: I wouldn’t ride Bohemian Highway as an out and back—the traffic whizzing past you as you do 5 mph on the return climb would be dangerous at any hour. River Rd. isn’t worth riding, ever. So we’re left with riding Green Valley Rd. + Harrison Grade Rd. as an out-and-back, with as much of Hwy 116 as you like.

Adding miles: See the Adding Miles section of our Occidental Loop ride for a list of the possibilities, which are many.

Distance: 17-mile lollipop
Elevation gain: 1730 ft

Occidental is an amazing cycling resource. Six roads head out of this little town, and each one of them is some degree of wonderful for riders. All 6 figure in a Bestrides route in one way or another. This route focuses on the roads to the east of town.

The roads between the towns of Occidental and Sebastopol all run through grand redwood forests and have charming, undulating contours. So you could just go wandering and ride any of them. But there’s a downside: the road surfaces are often terrible (Sonoma county cyclists take an odd pride in this), the roads are dangerously narrow, usually there is no shoulder (not a small shoulder—none), and the main arteries are heavily enough trafficked so as to be a pain if not an actual danger.

So what we want are routes on untrafficked back roads with good road surfaces. I’ve found two: this one and our Bohemian Highway loop (well, half of that one). This loop is entirely glass, and it spends most of its time on roads that see next to no cars—of the 6 roads it covers, only one may be uncomfortably busy. And every inch is beautiful to the eye and charming to ride. You’re about 2/3 in the woods and 1/3 riding by small farms and meadows, the farms are all cute, and there’s a general absence of vineyards, for which I am grateful. It racks up over 100 ft of gain per mile, yet there are no extended climbs, so you know it’s constantly rolling up and down—check that sawtooth elevation profile.

Begin in the town of Occidental, where our Coleman Valley Rd. ride and our Bohemian Highway ride start. It’s a famously charming little town, not yet totally touristified (for instance it still has a hardware store), with a couple of old, funky Italian hotel restaurants that are remarkably good and some other eateries with good reputations. Howard’s Station is a nice, simple restaurant with a short, unpretentious, and tasty menu. You immediately feel welcomed by the town because one side of the main street is a big free parking area without time limits. It’s a weekend destination for Santa Rosa-area residents looking for a small outing in good weather, so if you can ride on a weekday so much the better.

Ride out of town on Graton Rd. You are immediately in the midst of the Occidental riding experience: looming, cathedral-like redwoods, narrow lanes, no shoulder, some cars. This is the connector between Graton and Occidental, so it sees some traffic. I intentionally started later in the morning, to miss the morning work rush, and got passed by perhaps 6 cars.

Go R onto Green Hill Rd., largely car-free, then R onto Occidental Rd. Occidental is our only real risk of serious traffic, but if you’re after the morning rush and heading south/west (as you are) it shouldn’t be bad. Go R onto Jonive (“ho NEEV”) and prepare to experience serious cycling joy.

Jonive is one of my favorite roads anywhere. It (and Barnet Valley Rd., which follows) are all up and down, but never tiresomely so—just roller-coaster whoop-de-doos that will have you shouting. It’s all so pretty and perfect I find myself wondering what it’s like to live in that kind of idyllic beauty, but I’m not about to find out since apparently the average house on Jonive goes for around $3-4 mil.

Jonive dead-ends at the Bodega Highway, the busiest road in the area. Go L on it for about 30 ft. and go R onto Barnett Valley Rd., which is exactly like Jonive only slightly less joyful. Ride to the intersection of BVR and Burnside Rd. and turn around. You could continue on, on either BVR or Burnside, but the good road surface ends at the intersection.

When you get back to the meeting of Barnett Valley Rd. and Bodega Highway, you have a choice. You can re-ride Jonive, as I’ve mapped it, and it’s wonderful both ways, but if you have an aversion to out-and-backs you can go L onto Bodega for a busy but brief downhill run to Bohemian Highway and take BH back to Occidental. BH is more open, busier, and blander of contour than our route, but it too is very pretty and it has the advantage of passing the locally-famous Wild Flour Bread bakery, where you can stand in line with the other cyclists to buy one of their scones. I find the scones OK but not spectacular, but it’s part of the local scene, like eating at the Cheese Board Collective in Berkeley.

Assuming you stick to our mapped route, ride Jonive back to Occidental Rd. and take Occidental Rd. back to Occidental. Again, you may run into a bit of traffic, but it should be midday now and you’re going the less-busy direction. Of course it’s beautiful.

Shortening the ride: You could ride just the loop, and it’s all very pretty, but it’s also the most trafficked part of the ride. I’d go the other way: ride Jonive Rd.>Barnett Valley Rd. as an out-and-back.

Adding miles: Occidental is the starting point for our Coleman Valley Rd. ride, whose road surface was atrocious the last time I did it, and our Bohemian Highway loop, which can get trafficky. Bohemian Highway takes you to Monte Rio on the Russian River, which is near our Sweetwater Springs Rd. ride and our Kings Ridge Rd. ride. Heading south, if you can endure one more short stretch of the Bodega Highway you’ll get to Valley Ford Freestone Rd., which takes you to all the riding around Tamales Bay and our Chileno Valley loop.

If you’re set up for rough road surfaces, you can happily explore the warren of little roads to the east of Jonive and Barnett Valley Rds.

Distance: 15-mile out and back
Elevation gain: 2630 ft

This is another of those pure climbs out of the Wine Country valley floor. Bestrides has four of them: Pine Flat Road, Geysers Road, Ida Clayton Road, and this one. They are all peachy, they all climb through similar, moderately pretty scrub much of the time, and they’re all fairly long, hard climbs without being brutal (7-10%). Obviously I like them all. How to know which one to ride first? Here are some distinguishing features:

Geysers is the only loop among the four (though Cavedale and Ida Clayton can be made into one). Geysers and the loop version of Cavedale are the only two to include sweet flat valley riding. Geysers has a more varied contour than the others. Much of its road surface is rough, but readers tell me it’s been partially improved recently. It’s by far the longest, so it has by far the shallowest (easiest) climbing.

Pine Flat has the steepest pitches and has a nice flat break in the middle of the climb (the eponymous Pine Flat). It can’t be looped.

Cavedale and Ida Clayton have both been repaved recently and have glassy surfaces. 

Cavedale goes up to a summit and down the back side, so you get a super-sweet roller coaster between the summit and the turn-around that is one of my favorite legs in the Wine Country. Cavedale is the narrowest road of the four, which makes the descent sketchy.

Ida Clayton climbs steadily for 4 mi., then rolls and climbs mildly for another 4 mi. through beautiful woods on a road surface that ranges from OK to terrible.

Which one is the hardest? Here’s a quick look at the stats (very approximate) on the climbing segments only for the four rides:

Geysers: 22 miles, c. 180 ft/mile
Pine Flat Road: 10.6 miles, c. 340 ft/mile
Cavedale: 5.1 miles, c. 530 ft/mile
Ida Clayton: 4 mi, c. 620 ft/mile

As you can see, the shorter the ride the steeper the gradient. And sometimes averages lie—Pine Flat Rd. has some genuinely frightful pitches the others lack.

All four rides share the virtue of isolation: there’s really little reason for a car to be on any of them. Of the four, Cavedale is the busiest—despite its extremely car-unfriendly profile (narrow, winding), on my last visit it had a surprising number of vehicles on it.

Cavedale Rd. has one great virtue and one great drawback. The virtue is its perfect road surface—along with Ida Clayton, it’s as ideal a riding surface as you’ll find, and a great rarity in Sonoma County. The drawback is its narrowness. It’s so narrow that meeting a vehicle often means dismounting and getting off the road, and for that reason the descent is sketchy and cyclists often choose to do the road as part of a loop, descending Trinity Rd. instead (see below for details). I’ve had three conversations with local non-riders in which I mentioned that I was going to ride Cavedale, and every one of them volunteered, “Be careful—that’s a dangerous road.” I’m not kidding.

Cavedale climbs up from a spot along Hwy 12, over a summit, then up and down to its dead end at the summit of Trinity Rd. In character the climb is almost indistinguishable from Ida Clayton Rd’s.: steady 7-10% gain through Wine Country scrub with big vistas of the valley below as you ascend. Both rides go up to summits followed by mellow riding through pretty woods. If I was blindfolded and dropped on either climb I’m not sure I could tell which road I was on. Cavedale is slightly longer, slightly steeper, and significantly narrower.

Cavedale starts climbing at a brisk pace immediately, and at the southern end of Cavedale there is no shoulder parking, so for these two reasons I suggest you drive north on Hwy 12 a half mile to wide, open, flat Madrone Rd. and park/warm up there. Ride back to Cavedale, thanking god you don’t have to be on busy and dangerous Hwy 12 any longer than this.

At the base of Cavedale there are two promising signs: “Winding one-lane road, RV’s and trailers not recommended” (always encouraging for cyclists), and a sign telling you that the recent repaving is partly paid for out of profits from Levi’s Grand Fondo, the enormous group ride out of Santa Rosa—thank you, Mr. Leipheimer! (Hey, some of that money is mine!)

Climb for 5.1 miles to an obvious summit. There is little to distract you—there are no forks or crossroads and no visible houses by the road until you near the top. Many people live in the area and use the road (hence the traffic), but they’re all down long driveways and nothing is visible from the road except for the occasional gate. There is some fire damage, but the terrain is so barren you will hardly notice. Views of the valley below improve as you ascend.

Past the summit the road character changes into something wonderful. You leave the burn area, so the scenery gets lusher and prettier, and the road roller-coasters and serpentines deliciously to the turn-around. There’s only 2.2 miles of this, and you’ll wish there was more.

At the turn-around you have a big decision: descent Cavedale or descend Trinity? Here’s the Trinity loop route (thanks, MacKenzie):

For me it’s a hard decision to make. Neither descent is a favorite of mine. Trinity is shorter (3.1 mi.), hence much steeper—too steep to be real fun for me (steepest in the first mile or so, 10-12%)—and it’s absurdly curvy, with some nasty switchbacks. Trinity is much more heavily trafficked (it’s a major connector between the valleys), but MacKenzie in the comment below argues that you can outrun the car traffic. I didn’t find that to be true, but you may descend more aggressively than I do. Trinity’s primary appeal is, it’s wider—it’s a small two-lane road with centerline and minimal shoulder—and therefore safer, at least theoretically.

One appeal of the Trinity route is that it gives you a flat connecting leg between the base of Trinity and Cavedale that’s charming valley riding. It takes you through the heart of Glen Ellen, one of those quiet Wine Country towns the wine tourists tend to miss (stop at the unmistakable Les Pascals patisserie for a treat), then past the Sonoma Development Center (the gigantic complex that looks like an abandoned military base) with its fascinating history. Our backyard route avoids all of the horrors of Hwy 12 (very busy, narrow, no shoulder) save for the .5 mi. from Madrone to Cavedale.

If you do the Trinity loop route, make sure when you reach the intersection of Trinity and Hwy 12 you turn around to read the sign at the base of Trinity warning RV’s “You will get stuck!”

The Cavedale descent is too narrow and too steep to bomb, and traffic is a problem, but the sight lines are good and I enjoyed it when I relaxed and didn’t press.

Shortening the route: Ride to the summit and back (but you’ll miss my favorite miles). For a much easier ride, ride from the northwest end to the summit and back (4.4 miles RT).

See the Mt. Veeder Road Adding Miles section for options at the northwest end of Cavedale.

Adding miles: As discussed in the Mt. Veeder Road ride, Mt. Veeder and Cavedale are sorta parallel, so you can loop them both by riding one, then Trinity Grade to the other, then a rather lengthy connector through the greater Sonoma area. Locals do it, but I wouldn’t because it involves a large dose of the horrible Hwy 12.

If you do the Trinity loop route, when you’re in Glen Ellen you’re on the eastern edge of a delightfully pleasant warren of roads. Everything there is good—feel free to wander. Warm Springs Rd., Bennett Valley Rd., Lawndale Rd., Henno, and Sonoma Mountain Rd. are all rewarding (thanks, Brian).

Distance: 25-mile dumbbell
Elevation gain: 3340 ft

(Note: Apparently there was a nearly-impassable washout on Old Howell Mt. Road earlier in 2023 but the road is now clear—see reader comment below.)

This ride is a bit of a grab bag.  It strings together three climbs and three descents, each with its own character.  Locals typically ride it one way, from south to north, and continue on, as a part of pleasant longer routes we’ll discuss in Adding Miles.  But it’s equally good in both directions, and I’m not crazy about those longer routes, so I’ve mapped it as an out and back dumbbell.  The scenery is fairly ordinary for the area, and I wouldn’t drive far out of my way to do it, but it has nice variety, a very nice climb, and the thrill of riding a Forbidden Road (see below).  It also includes 1.6 miles of a nasty mix of heavy traffic and broken pavement which you must simply survive.

Because Old Howell Mt. Road is officially closed to all vehicles (see below), many maps (including electronic ones) don’t acknowledge its existence.  Also, various maps have various opinions about what it’s called.  Just follow the route map and you’ll be fine.

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Distance: 35 miles out and back
Elevation gain: 3925 ft

This is one of seven rides (all detailed in the Adding Miles section of the Mountain View Road post) that are worth doing around Boonville, a charming little town with good food and an interesting history, so I encourage you to find a place to stay in the area, make a cycling holiday out of it, and do all of them.

On paper, Hopland Road (aka Hwy 175) is exactly the sort of road Bestrides avoids like the plague: a big, wide main route between two fairly uninteresting towns with an unaltered pitch (read: slog) through unprepossessing scrublands.   The climbing is monotonous, the shoulder is minimal, and the traffic is well above Bestrides’ preferred one car per mile.  But the descending is swell and the vistas are breath-taking.  Do the ride for these two rewards, or don’t do it at all.  And, on the bright side, the traffic, while noticeable, isn’t obnoxious, since the two communities the road connects (Hopland and Lakeport) are both small and the road is straight and wide enough that passing is easy everywhere, and the road surface is flawless, at least on the west side of the summit.

If you don’t like out and backs or just find that once on Hopland Road is enough, I show you a way to loop the ride (on some dirt) in Adding Miles.

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Distance: 42-mile loop
Elevation gain: 3820 ft

(Note 11/12/20: Geysers Road was a victim of the Kincaide Fire.  Richard (in his comment below) says the landscape is OK.)

For a comparison of 4 climbs in the Wine Country—Pine Flat Road, Geysers Road, Ida Clayton Road, and Cavedale Road—see the introduction to the Ida Clayton Road post.

Many areas have the “Big Ride,” the one you do on the day you want to put in some miles and do some work.  In the Wine Country, the Big Ride is Geysers Road (when it isn’t Stewarts Point/Skaggs Springs Rd.).

When I reached the beginning of the Geysers Road climb, I was stopped by a group of road maintenance guys and we got to talking.  Did I really want to do this?, one of them asked.  Geysers, he said, was a mess.  Long and steep, with a surface that was at its best broken pavement, at its worst full of gravel, rocks, and fallen plant material, with frequent stretches of dirt road and spots of minimally repaired earthquake damage where the road “just falls off.”  Also no water or other reprovisioning opportunities, and little to no cell service.

As it turns out, he was absolutely right, but it’s a wonderful ride nonetheless and nothing to be feared.  Except for one hard mile of 14-15% climbing, all the elevation gain (c. 4000 ft) is thoroughly manageable, and the scenery is stunning.  As with all Wine Country riding, the road surface is indeed poor, varying from sorta OK to wretched, but the worst of it is on the ascent, when you’re doing 5-7 mph and it’s not an issue.   I found the earthquake sections geologically fascinating.  And the isolation is a large part of the appeal—after I passed the turn-off to the gravel pit 3 miles in I can’t remember seeing a single vehicle.  (Mike below says 2021 saw a major patching of potholes and the road surface is now better.)

If you have everyone’s image of the Wine Country—vineyards, gently rolling hills, old farm houses, everything neat as a pin—forget it.  Geysers is a wild and woolly climb up the side of a creek canyon, followed by a few ridge crossings and mad descents through more canyons, all barren of signs of humanity (one house, one thermal power plant).   No wine tasting here.  You do, however, get that stereotypical Wine Country riding experience on the Geysers Rd.-to-Cloverdale leg.

You want to ride Geysers from north to south.  The road is in two halves with very different characters.  The north side (up to the Geysers Resort Road turn-off) is narrow, mellow of pitch, rough, and winding.  The south side is steep, wider, straighter, and smoother (though not smooth).  So riding from south to north robs you of most of the road’s rewards: instead of a charming, curious, and mellow ascent and a speedy, relatively smooth descent, you get a steep, relatively featureless slog up to the summit, followed by an unpleasantly rough descent.  You’ll see riders beginning at the south end, but I suspect they’re riding to the summit and back.  This is fine if all you want is a workout, but the north side is by far the prettier and more dramatic.

By the way, you won’t see geysers.  You’ll see some developed thermal activity in the distance to your L, but it isn’t pretty and the resort itself is closed.

I would avoid this ride on a hot summer day, since much of it is exposed and there is no water.

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Distance: 21 miles out and back
Elevation gain: 2440 ft

I love this road.  It’s loaded with character, and will charm you, I promise.

Mt. Veeder Rd. is a text-book two-hour ride: a straight ride up and over a summit, then return.   The landscape is varied and always pretty, and the road contour is ever-changing.  It’s a perfect ride, and the descent is my favorite descent in the Wine Country.  Once it was cursed with the usual Sonoma County lousy road surface.  About that I have good news, bad news, and good news.  The good news is that MVR has been recently repaved (Thanks, Joel) and it is now without a pothole or patch, so you can absolutely rip the descent.  The bad news is, it’s chipseal, so it’s a mite chattery. The other good news is, the repaving was done a while ago and car traffic has had time to wear down the worst of the jaggedness.  It’s not great, but it’s good.  The workload is between easy and hard—you’ll notice the climbing on both sides of the summit.

MVR is paralleled by a much more car-friendly road, Dry Creek Road (more on that later), that goes to the same place, so logically it should be car-free.  It isn’t.  When last I rode it, Monday afternoon in March, it was at times almost busy.  As with every other rural road is California, MVR is suffering from an influx of mansions and vineyards.  Again, it’s not great but it’s good.

By the way, names are misleading here.  You are not climbing a mountain, and, despite the fact that you begin on Redwood Road and follow Redwood Creek for miles, these are not redwood forests.  If you look up the hillside to the west you can spot some scraggly redwoods, but that’s it.  Still, the non-redwood woods are quite pretty.

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Distance: 22 miles out and back
Elevation gain: 2600 ft

Occidental is an amazing cycling resource. Six roads head out of this little town, and each one of them is some degree of wonderful for riders. All 6 figure in a Bestrides route in one way or another. This route focuses on the roads to the west of town.

This ride has great variety of scenery and road contour in only 12 miles—dense deciduous woods, some redwoods, a meadowed valley, some open, rolling coastal uplands, the coast itself, and an iconic climb up from Hwy 1.  It’s all really pretty.  It’s more work than meets the eye—2600 ft in 20 miles, or well over our 100 ft/mile benchmark for climbing hardness, with several short pitches of 10% and three extended climbs you’ll definitely notice.  And the road surface is consistently poor to dreadful (this is, after all, Sonoma County), so all descending is largely spoiled.  Yet I’m very fond of this ride, and I think you will be too.  A bonus is that it starts and ends in Occidental, one of California’s most charming villages.  See Adding Miles below for other routes out of Occidental with much better road surface.

The climb up from the ocean after the turn-around tends to be mentioned in hushed tones by California cyclists, because it figures in the routes of a couple of famous rides, Levi’s Gran Fondo and the Marin Double Century.  It’s a bit of a spirit-crusher after 70 hard miles, but you’re going to be fairly fresh, so it’s not a huge deal.  You’ll climb about 700 ft in about 1.3 miles, roughly 10% average, with a stretch in the middle around 12%.  About the time you start cursing, it’s over.  And it’s at its steepest in the first half, so your spirit improves as you climb.

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Distance: 49-mile lollipop
Elevation gain: 3920 ft

(A Best of the Best ride)

This ride is legendary.  It’s the cornerstone of Levi Leipheimer’s King’s Ridge Gran Fondo, a ride that includes, in addition to most of this loop, our Coleman Valley Road ride, plus about 30 miles of very nice rolling farm and forest land riding out from Santa Rosa to Occidental and back.  I don’t recommend Levi’s ride per se, because I think it’s unfriendly, but the entire route is well worth riding.

As is my method, I’m going to cut out Levi’s 30 miles of merely good riding and just tell you about the great stuff.  It’s all pretty, challenging riding (5530 ft gain, and the poor road surfaces add to the effort).   Perks include redwoods, a classic woodsy village, a Best of the Best descent, and the opportunity to detour to an overnight on the coast.

King’s Ridge Rd. (or King Ridge Rd.—you see it both ways) is a rough, centerline-less sorta-two-lane road that does a lot of climbing and then rolls along a ridge top through beautiful, wild country—rugged ranches and open space.  Traffic is almost non-existent—the last time I rode the 47-mile loop, it was a beautiful holiday and I saw 8 vehicles, or 1 vehicle every 6 miles.  The views from the ridgetop are grand.  You can look north over a series of ridges untouched by Man and imagine that you’re the first human to see it.   The odd thing is, you’re close to right.  If you look at a map of California, you’ll see there’s nothing to the north of you for a hundred miles except a few small, sparsely-traveled roads.   Breathe deeply.  It’s a lonely, inspiring experience (another reason not to do it as part of Levi’s ride, when you have 7,000 riders for company).  It’s not as wild as it used to be, thanks to some invasive vineyards, but it’s still epic.

The bad news is, the road surface varies from poor to lousy for most of the 50 miles.    For some, the rough road surface becomes part of the adventure.  And someone actually repaved 2.2 miles of it (see below), so it’s not as bad as it used to be.

(Note: if you read through the readers’ comments below, you’ll see that the state of the road surfaces on the climb to King’s Ridge is the subject of much debate.  I haven’t seen it in a while, but I gather it’s much improved—by how much is unclear.)

I’ve seen articles which call this ride “the greatest bike ride in America.”  That’s absurd.  It’s good.  It’s in my Best Of the Best, but is actually one of my least favorite rides on that list.

(To see an interactive version of the map/elevation profile, click on the ride name, upper left, wait for the new map to load, then click on the “full screen” icon, upper right.)

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