Distance: 39.4 out and back
Elevation gain: 2064 ft

This ride continues the riding we did in the Avenue of the Giants North route. It’s more of the same—grand, world-famous redwood groves seen from a modest two-lane road with an excellent road surface and just enough variation in pitch and direction to give it a touch of character. With both rides, Hwy 101 parallels the route just out of sight the length of the route, so all the through traffic is on the highway and you only have to deal with people who have come for the trees.

Of course you could do the two rides as one, but that would give you 72 miles of redwood tunnel, which is probably more than a body needs, especially since this is riding and gawking, not time-trialing through, so you’ll want to keep a very moderate pace. I recommend doing the ride whose description best suits you. Though in fact there is little to distinguish one from the other. I think the trees on the northern ride are a bit bigger and the aura of Bigfoot kitsch a bit stronger.

I’ve included the 4-5 miles of Mattole Rd. on both routes, because they are the best miles in either route.

Both rides are essentially flat. The RWGPS elevation graphs make both look like the climbing ride from hell, but it’s a trick of the map’s scale. At least 95% of this route is 0-2% pitch. The worst “climb” is the overpass to get across Hwy 101. I really can’t imagine where that 2064 ft figure comes from. My Garmin recorded a bit over 1000 ft. gain.

Of course since this is a world-famous State Park (Humboldt Redwoods SP), there is always the fear of mobs and traffic. Maybe I was lucky, but I did the ride midday on a lovely July Saturday—in other words, peak rush hour—and the traffic was light and considerate. Perhaps a car everyf minute. And passing is unthreatening, because the road is wide and the sight lines are excellent. Most of the groves were deserted or had one or two visitors. The only crush was at Founder’s Grove, the Park’s main draw, which I suggest you avoid.

Awe-inspiring as cycling along the Avenue of the Giants is, the road still keeps the trees at an emotional distance. If you get off the main road, the dramatic intensity doubles. This only becomes apparent if and when you either ride a smaller side road or dismount and walk among the trees, and I strongly urge you to do both. The AOTG makes this easy by placing sponsored groves along the route. These groves typically have educational placards, the biggest trees, narrow roads going into campgrounds, and short hiking loops. I encourage you to stop at all of them, but to my knowledge getting up close and personal with the redwoods can be accomplished best in three places:

1. The Mahan Plaque Loop Trail: just south of Weott, this trail is especially magical. You don’t need to do it all (3/4 mi.)—walking 50 feet off the road is enough to awaken the spirits of Lothlórien.

2. The California Federation of Women’s Clubs Grove: a stone’s throw from the Mahan Plaque Loop Trail, this grove has the longest, narrowest, and most beautiful road of all the groves on the route. Barely more than a path, it serpentines between the grandest of the trees for about 1/3 mi. The best part is, the grove is closed for what looks like a lengthy spell, so you ride around the gate and have the place to yourself. At the end of the path is an architectural wonder, a four-sided fireplace designed by the beloved Julia Morgan. This was my favorite 15 min. of the ride and not to be missed.

3. Mattole Rd.: the trees are bigger here than along the Avenue, but the real joy is that the road is narrower, so you go from riding BY the redwoods to being IN them. So don’t get to Mattole Rd., assume that Mattole is just more of the same, and turn around.

The route has been kept blissfully free of development and marketing. There are only two places to buy a Powerbar or a Bigfoot keychain: Myers Flat, which is a tiny but complete community, and the Burlington Visitor Center, which is a large store-and-campground complex. The rest is trees. Weott (population c. 250) is a small collection of houses without services as far as I know which sits on Hwy 101 a stone’s throw from our route. Apparently it used to be on the AOTG but was destroyed by flood in 1964 and relocated on Hwy 101.

Start in the pleasant village of Miranda. There are 6 more miles of the AOTG south of there, but I don’t know anything about them. Ride north to the large and complicated intersection of the AOFG, Hwy 101, and Mattole Rd.. Ride Mattole westward until the road begins to climb. Turn around and ride home. Views of the South Fork of the Eel River are frequent.

Shortening the ride: The stars of this route are the Mahan Plaque Loop Trail, The California Federation of Women’s Clubs Grove, and Mattole Rd. Luckily they’re all within a few miles from the Mattole Rd. intersection, so I suggest you start at Mattole Rd., ride it out and back, then ride south on the Avenue as far as you want.

Adding miles: Obviously our Avenue of the Giants North ride is immediately to the north. See the Adding Miles section of that ride for other options. There are 6 more miles of the Avenue to the south of Miranda but I don’t know anything about them.

Distance: 21.3- mi. loop
Elevation gain: 2277 ft

This is the best ride that I know in the Garberville area. It’s a dreamy romp through beautiful woods on narrow (often one-lane), meandering roads with next-to-no traffic and fair to excellent pavement (a rarity in Humboldt County). I love it, with one huge BUT in the middle of my joy—a 1.4-mile stretch of very steep (10-13%) rocky gravel that is, in a word, nasty.

The route includes 5 miles on Shelter Cove Rd., and I’ve declared my dislike of that road in the Briceland Loop write-up, but this stretch is as pretty as the road gets, and if we don’t ride it we have to do the route as a 32-mile out and back, which necessitates riding the Gravel from Hell stretch twice, and that’s asking a lot.

You can start the loop anywhere (there is easy parking at Thorne Junction and the Chemise Mountain Rd. turn-off) and ride in either direction. I’ve mapped it the way I have because the Chemise Mt. Rd. section is better than the Briceland Thorne section, so I’ve saved the best for later, and this way the Gravel from Hell is uphill, which is merely tedious and unpleasant, whereas doing it as a descent is wretched.

Road naming in this region always seems problematic, and our route actually goes by three names. When you turn off Briceland Thorne at Thorne Junction, you are in fact continuing on Briceland Thorne (the main road continuing west is now Shelter Cove Rd.). At an obvious intersection at the southernmost point of the loop, Briceland Thorne crosses Usal Rd. (there is actually a road sign at the intersection), turns to dirt, and drops down to the ocean—ride it if you want a challenge. Usal is dirt to your L and pavement to your R, and it’s Usal to the right that is our route. Somewhere between there and Shelter Cove Rd., it becomes Chemise Mountain Rd. I’ve decided to call the ride after this last incarnation, because it’s the most distinctive name of the three.

Park at Thorne Junction, where Briceland Thorne Rd. and Shelter Cove Rd. diverge. There is ample dirt parking at the intersection or on the shoulder of either road.

Humboldt County has a reputation for being hard on cars parked in the outback—something to do with an economy based on pot growing and a consequent dislike of strangers nosing around. If you google the issue, people will tell you that parked cars may be torched. How much you want to buy into this is up to you. I did take valuables and important documents out of my car before parking, and I was parking in a moderately “touristy” area. I had no problems. But there is lots of evidence along back roads like Chemise Mt. Rd. that weird things are going on back in there, and I would be reluctant to leave my car very far from a well-trafficked road like Shelter Cove Rd.

Head down Briceland Thorne. At first it’s a wide two-lane with center line and fairly developed, but it gets wilder, narrower, scenically grander, and rougher of road surface as you proceed. When you surprisingly encounter the public school, Whitethorn Elementary, you know the signs of civilization are coming to an end. Soon the road is a wide one-lane, and the road surface is poor, though never bad enough to make you sorry you came. The woods are top-notch.

At the intersection with Usal Rd. you might reasonably decide that you don’t want to tackle the Gravel from Hell and turn around for a tidy 20-mile out-and-back. But I hope you don’t, because the 7 miles that remain are much better than what you’ve already done—prettier woods, better pavement, narrower roadway, a distant view of the ocean, funner contour…just better in every way. One of my favorite stretches of road anywhere.

Except of course for the gravel. How bad is it? In dry conditions, it’s in good shape, so you don’t have to deal with ruts or potholes. It’s a fairly smooth surface, thin loose gravel over hard dirt and small jagged rock. If it were flat, it wouldn’t be worth a mention. But at 12%, if you have big soft tires it’s an unpleasant grind. On hard skinny tires, it may be impossible. I find it helpful to know exactly when it will be over, so before I begin I calculate the mileage at the end.

The gravel ends at a summit, and on the other side the pavement is glass, so you go from a jarring, sweating 4 mph to an effortless 25 mph serpentine. The surface, and the scenery, are marvelous all the way to Shelter Cove Rd. (2.7 mi.)

The 5 miles on Shelter Cove Rd. back to your car consist of 1 mile of hard (to 12%) climbing followed by an equally steep descent. As I said, it’s the best five miles between Shelter Cove and Garberville—very pretty, with a road contour that is first-rate serpentining. If you can catch the traffic on an off-day, it’s really very nice, though hard.

Shortening the ride: The best part of the ride is the 7 miles (14 miles RT) between the Shelter Cove Rd./Chemise Mountain Rd. intersection and the Usal Rd./Briceland Thorne Rd. intersection. But of course that includes the gravel. Twice.

Adding miles: At Thorne Junction you’re 7+ miles from the village of Briceland, which is on our Briceland Loop ride. Closer is the Ettersburg/Honeydew/Wilder Ridge Rd., which I haven’t done but which looks good, goes on seemingly forever, and is constantly climbing or descending vigorously.

I don’t recommend it, “because traffic” as they say, but you can ride to Shelter Cove. It’s a brute of a climb coming back out, and there isn’t any sort of “beach town” there—no surf shops, no taco stands, no T shirt emporia, no tourist presence of any kind. Just lots of large houses, a small marina, a funky little historical lighthouse, and a couple of places to eat. A couple of miles east of town you pass a general store.

Distance: 18 mi.loop
Elevation gain: 2067 ft

One of my favorite kinds of ride is the back road from Point A to Point B where there is a bigger road also going from A to B, so all the car traffic goes on the big road and I can ride the back road in peace and quiet. That’s exactly what we have here. Briceland Rd., the big road, goes from Garberville to Briceland and gets all the traffic. Old Briceland Rd. also goes from Garberville to Briceland, but it does it circuitously, with a lot of up and down and back and forth. In short, just what cars hate and we cyclists love. So you have it to yourself. I saw no vehicles.

My route rides them both, but as you can see I much prefer Old Briceland Rd., and you are free to ride it as an out and back. The only drawbacks are: 1) you’ll do a lot more work (90% of the loop’s considerable elevation gain is in this half of the ride), and 2) there’s the familiar curse of the unused back road—the road surface is sometimes poor.

Then there is the question of which direction to go. You can start the loop anywhere and go either way. This stretch of Briceland Rd. is easy riding—all gentle rollers—and Old Briceland is almost entirely one big hill, so you can decide whether to put the work first or last. The hard work on Old Briceland is about the same (a mile+ of 10-14%) in either direction . So I mapped it the way I did for two reasons: I started in town so you can go to Il Forno, Garberville’s exemplary bakery, after the ride; and Old Briceland has a stretch of poor pavement on the east side of the summit, and I chose to ride it going up instead of going down.

Park on Garberville’s main street, which is Redwood Dr., and turn west onto Sprowel Creek Rd., which is easy because it’s the only stoplight in town and the only road going W from downtown (Garberville is small). Turn on to Old Briceland Rd. and get ready for a substantial climb. It’s about 5.5 miles of climbing, 1.3 miles of it fierce. It’s glass for the first half and a bit broken up for the second. My favorite part of the loop is west of the summit, where you ride along the sidehill of a lovely grassy valley, a beautiful break from the area’s typical dense forest. You should be alone.

Briceland the town is about twenty houses and a large fire station. Go R onto Briceland Rd. (look behind you to see the sign on the eastern edge of town advertising a children’s nursery and a funeral parlor). Ride to Redway.

I am not a fan of the road from Garberville to Shelter Cove, which goes by several names, and of which Briceland Rd. is a section. It has a pretty nice contour and pretty nice scenery, but any of the side roads that go off from it has better of both, and the main road is trafficky. It’s all a standard two-lane with center line, but it’s busy, it has no shoulder, and the sight lines are poor so passing is frustrating for the cars. It’s not city-level traffic—I’d say maybe a car every minute or two—but each vehicle makes me tense. Why run the gamut when the side roads are empty of cars?

Assuming you want to do the loop, the 5 miles on Briceland Rd. are pretty enough and easy enough and they’re over quickly. Most of the scenery is hillside scrub, but just before you hit Redway you ride through the John B. Dewitt Redwoods State Natural Preserve, a peerless stand of enormous redwoods, and for half a mile you’re in bliss.

From Redway to Garberville the route is unmissable, trafficky, and short. Finish your ride at Il Forno (“The Oven” in Italian), a small, friendly bakery with sandwiches and salads and the priceless bennie of being able to sit at a table facing the street and watch your bike leaning safely against their railing.

Shortening the ride: I don’t see how. If you insist, ride from Briceland to the summit of Old Briceland Rd. and back.

Adding to the route: Alderpoint Rd. goes east from town and is reputed to be good riding all the way to Ruth Lake. From Briceland, you’re within riding distance of Ettersburg Rd., which I haven’t ridden but looks good, and further on our Chemise Mountain Rd. loop.

Distance: 17 mi. out and back
Elevation gain: 1184 ft

There are great rides worth driving distances to get to, and then there are perfectly pleasant rides that are worth doing if you happen to be right where they happen to be. This ride is one of the latter, and well worth doing if you find yourself in Willits, California, looking for a nice ninety-minute spin. It’s a mild climb up a little canyon you’d never find unless someone told you about it, as Bestrides fan Brian told me (thanks, man). The scenery is conventional Norcal woods, the road surface is good, there is next to no traffic, and there isn’t much else to say about it.

You could park at the west end of Canyon Rd., but I encourage you to follow my map and park on E. Commercial St. on the east edge of Willits and ride the 3 miles of flat, straight farmland to Canyon. This is usually not my way, but I found these miles relaxing and pleasant and I recommend them. I parked at the city library, but there is an abundance of secure roadside parking in that area.

Canyon Rd. climbs for 2 miles with a pleasing variety of contour and pitch, then descends easily for 1.6 miles to a large but unmarked intersection where Canyon ends and Tomki Rd. goes R and L. The only signage is a small sign reading “Milo,” with an arrow pointing L, posted on a tree trunk in the middle of the intersection. We’re going L.

Tomki turns out to be a surprise. It’s essentially flat, working its way up a small valley, and the road is wider and better-surfaced (pristine ouchless chipseal) than anyone has a right to expect, since there seems to be no one up there and the road goes nowhere (except, apparently, to “Milo”).

The road surface remains impeccable until it goes suddenly to hell, at a prominent horseshoe bend to the R, and in 100 ft. the pavement stops. You’d never know it, but Tomki is actually dead-ending into Hearst-Willits Rd., which you were on briefly at the beginning of the ride. Turn around and ride back to Willits.

Off the bike, there are a couple of features of Willits worth seeking out. First, the Loose Caboose is a charming, friendly sandwich shop serving topnotch food. Like a lot of sandwich shops, they tend to close early (4-ish), so schedule your ride accordingly. Second, Willits is the home of one of the West’s great train museums, the oddly named Roots of Motive Power. It puts on regular events where you can ride trains, watch magnificent old steam (real steam) engines move earth, and talk to old coots about the life. I loved it. It’s at a large park a stone’s throw from where I encouraged you to start your ride. You’ll notice the train cars across the street.

You can read about the mysterious Milo here.

Shortening the ride: It’s already short and fairly easy, but you can turn around at Tomki Rd.

Adding miles: Where we went L onto Tomki Rd. at the end of Canyon, you could go R and take Tomki south. It parallels Hwy 101 all the way to Calpella, and is a popular route for touring cyclists riding from Ukiah to Willits, but from our intersection it soon hits a major stretch of rough dirt, so unless you’re up for some serious adventure riding you won’t want to go that way.

Hearst-Willits Rd., which is the road our route takes to get to Canyon Rd., goes N just before Canyon Rd. starts and immediately leads to Reynolds Hwy, which is more of that flat-straight ag stuff.

Distance: 21 mi. lollipop
Elevation gain: 1875 ft

If you’r’e like me, you’ve driven past Clear Lake many times, but you’ve rarely gotten off the three highways that circumnavigate the lake: Hwy 20 on the north shore, Hwy 29 on the south shore, and Hwy 58 on the east shore. Now is the time, because on the peninsula that juts into the lake heading west from the town of Clearlake (no space) there is a lovely little network of roads crying out to be ridden.

Clear Lake has two outstanding rides: Clear Lake to Cobb and this one. The two rides couldn’t be more different. The ride to Cobb is a sweet steady climb through lush forest to a tiny mountain community and back. This one is a mix of riding conditions—some small-town streets, some flat shoreline, some short steep rollers, and some climbing through dry (though pretty) oak-and-grass landscapes with big vistas of the lake below you and in the distance. And there’s some history here as well—the eponymous Sulphur Banks, where Native Americans and later Europeans dug for Cinnebar, Sulphur, Borax, and Mercury, and one of the oldest archeological sites in the US, with signs of habitation dating back 12,000 years!

It all starts in the town of Clearlake. It’s a conventional little town, with a fresh spritely energy. It’s the kind of town that has several barbershops, all called something like Clearlake Barber Shop. You won’t find artisanal bakeries, and I’ll bet the locals don’t know what a “barista” is. I like it a lot. So I’ve started the ride in the center of town, at the unmissable Austin City Park, where there is plenty of parking, so I could include a few miles through downtown streets. If you’re not hot on riding busy streets, fear not—Lakeshore Drive, the first leg of the route, gets quieter, prettier, more interesting topographically, and more isolated the farther west you go.

Throughout its length Lakeshore alternates between hugging the waterline through enclaves of small lakefront vacation bungalows, each with its own ramshackle pier, and climbing up the hillside for nice views of the lake and the bungalows below you.

Lakeshore ends at an intersection with North Rd., and we are eventually going R onto North, but not yet. An obviously secondary road continues westward (the direction you’ve been riding in up to this point). Signed as Crestview Rd., it’s short but choice and you should ride it. it’s a little narrower, a little steeper, and a little more meandering that what you’ve done, and the vistas of the lake are ideal. It ends at a gate and a “private community” sign. Speak a curse on the moneyed elitists and turn around.

Back at North Rd., take it. It’s very different from Lakeshore, in that it’s not along the shore—it’s up the hill, so the shore, the bungalows, and the piers are well below you and usually out of sight. It’s almost completely untouched wilderness. Because it doesn’t have to follow the shore, it’s flatter than Lakeshore, which means it meanders side to side more. It’s perfect riding, and I don’t think I saw a vehicle. It ends all too soon at Sulphur Bank Drive.

A word about ride scheduling: North, as its name implies, is on the north side of the ridge, which means it’s in shadow for most or all of the day. This is a lovely thing on a hot summer’s day, but in the winter it means it’s probably wet. On the January day when I rode it, with no rain at all in the recent weather systems, it was still soaking wet from dew at 2 pm and slippery as a result. On the other hand, in the winter the oaks have dropped their leaves (still gorgeous) and so the vistas on North Rd. and Sulphur Bank are superior.

At the intersection of North and Sulphur Bank, you go L onto Sulphur Bank. You’re already near the summit of the SBD climb, but what remains is cherry, with great views of Borax Lake, the town of Clearlake, and the south arm of Clear Lake itself on your right and far below you. The back side of the hill is ideal riding, both climbing and descending—a little over a mile of 6-7%, with constant esses. As soon as you start down you get grand views of the north arm of Clear Lake, the community of Clearlake Oaks, and the Sulphur Bank between you and them. The bank, a shoreline hillside prominently dug away, is actually down a side road, Sulphur Bank Mine Road, signed with many protestations of privacy and promises of dire punishments meted out to trespassers, but the good views of the bank are a mere 1/8th of a mile down the road and you can easily pop down and poach a look-see. You can read about the history of the Bank here.

At the bottom of the hill you roll through pretty ranch land to a T at Hwy 20, and you turn around and climb back to the summit. The descent from the summit to Borax Lake is the stuff of dreams—1.6 mi. of serpentining so good I’d put it in Bestrides’ list of Best Descents if it were a bit longer. At Borax Lake you can look around for the archeological site but you won’t see it—you can read about it here. At least try to wrap your head around the idea of humans living their lives here 8,000 years before the early Egyptians.

Shortening the ride: You’ve got two excellent options. You can ride Sulphur Bank Drive alone as an out and back. You can ride the Lakeshore/North loop by itself, which gives you much less climbing.

Adding miles: Along the spine of the peninsula runs Crestview Rd. It forks off from Lakeshore a few miles into our ride and returns to Lakeshore right at the North Rd. intersection. It’s mostly dirt, but it looks to be good dirt. It’s on my to-do list. Oddly (for dirt), it’s covered in Streetview, so you can preview it. I don’t know of other good riding in the immediate vicinity. The Clear Lake to Cobb ride discusses good riding further afield.

Our route cuts off 2/3 of the south-side Sulphur Bank Drive climb, and it’s a very sweet climb, so you might like to turn around when you get to Borax Lake, climb back up to North Rd., and turn around again. That way you’d get to do most of the grand Sulphur Bank descent twice.