Distance: 11.4 mile out and back
Elevation gain: 2070 ft

This is another nice climb out of a Wine Country valley, of which Bestrides has several, this time taking off from the eastern edge of Santa Rosa. Since Bestrides has a lot of these rides, I try to think in terms of what’s special about each. This one is shorter than most (5.7 mi. one way), a good bit steeper than most (way over the 100 ft/mile benchmark), and blessed with a pristine road surface (a feature it shares with Ida Clayton and Cavedale). The scenery is pretty standard Wine Country climb: open hillside with a sprinkling of oaks and houses. The traffic, as with most Wine Country dead-end climbs, is minimal. The road size begins as a wide, double yellow-lined two-lane, shrinks to a wide one-lane without centerline, then shrinks further to a true one-lane in its last mile. Vistas are minimal—brief views of Santa Rosa in the valley below and of the mountains surrounding.

All of which raises the question of why you would pick this ride over Bestride’s other Wine Valley Climbs. I can think of three reasons: 1) you want some steep. 13-15% pitch is pretty rare in this area—Los Alamos has a couple of stretches. 2: You’re in the area, and the narrowness of Cavedale and the roughness of Sonoma Mountain Rd., the other two nearby Bestrides rides, put you off. 3: You like an adventure (see the last mile of the ride description below).

Los Alamos Rd. (“the poplars” in Spanish—I didn’t notice any) takes off from Hwy 12 just south of Santa Rosa, and at first it looks like nothing but standard Greater Bay Area suburbia. Park on a side street. Soon the houses begin to thin out (though they continue to dot the hillsides). Climb on pretty, smooth, big two-lane full of sweeping curves to a major fork in the road, at which point the double-yellow stops and there’s a sign reading “Winding one-lane road” (the usual Highway Department overstatement—two cars can pass easily), and the pitch moderates. This is my favorite leg of the ride, with no houses, a nice rollercoaster road contour, and no one else on the road.

Shortly you see a prominent ranch house on the R, there’s a gate for closing off the road, a sign reads “15% grade,” and the road goes to true one-lane. The rest of the ride is only 1 mile, and it’s a trip. If you like adventure it might be the reason you’re doing the ride. You cross a small ridge top with some excellent views of the hills ahead of you to the south, then plummet down the promised 15% pitch to the end of the road at the Hood Mountain Regional Park trailhead, which is nothing more than a dirt parking lot and a parking ticket vending machine. This road is on a steep sidehill, with a wall on one side and a drop-off on the other, and you can occupy your mind with musing on just what two cars would do if they met going in opposite directions. I have no idea. I met one vehicle during my descent, and I barely had room to squeeze my bike between them and the wall. The driver graciously moved to his R about 3 inches.

Curiously, Streetview doesn’t map this last mile—it stops at the gate, which it shows as closed. Someone’s in denial.

Depending on who you are, that mile may be the highlight of the ride or something you definitely want to skip. The climb back out is tough, and there’s absolutely nothing worth seeing at the bottom. I liked it, but I like edgy.

The ride back is predictable. The first mile is a true slog, then the ride back to the double-yellow is sweet, then the descent on the double-yellow, like most Wine Country descents, varies from ripping to (for me) too-steep-to-be-much-fun. YMMV.

Shortening the ride: Turn around at the gate. You’ll only be saving 2 miles, but you’ll save a lot of effort.

Adding miles: Adobe Canyon Rd., a short, pleasant little climb, is just to the south of you on Hwy 12. A bit further down 12 are the Cavedale Rd. and Sonoma Mountain Rd. rides. Just north of you, off Calistoga Rd., is St. Helena Rd., a ride I like because I like wooly outback rides but whose road surface is too poor to make it into Bestrides. In 13 miles it will take you to the town of St. Helena, but it’s a very steep climb coming back.

Distance: 26.4-mile lollipop
Elevation gain: 2790 ft

Another climb out of a Wine Country valley, this ride takes off from Glen Ellen, one of the area’s most charming and unspoiled little villages, goes up and over a summit, does a loop around the valley to the west, and returns via the same hill.

Its advantages over the other Wine Country climbs are two: it’s more lushly wooded than they are (the terrain is primarily pretty oak forest, with a touch of redwood grove thrown in), and it’s a lollipop, not an out-and-back. Its drawbacks are two: one stretch of bad pavement and one stretch of bad traffic. In the Shortening the Ride section I’ll show you how to avoid both.

Begin in Glen Ellen. Before or after the ride, be sure to partake of the sweets at Les Pascals (literally “those born on Easter”) Patisserie on the main drag. I park at the intersection of Warm Springs Rd. and Henno Rd., a stone’s throw from downtown, where there’s a large informal dirt parking lot. Ride a mile on pretty, busy, up-and-down Warm Springs Rd. and turn L (clearly signed) onto Sonoma Mountain Rd.

Immediately begin a demanding 3-mile climb (lots of 10+%) to the summit. The road is super narrow, a true one-lane, which is fun, but the pavement is consistently poor, with patches on the patches. It’s a real bother. The foliage is at first scruffy but turns into very pretty oak woodland. Traffic is minimal, though there is a sprinkling of houses belonging to hardy souls who want to bounce up and down that hill every day.

At the summit you pass the Sonoma Mountain Zen Center and the pavement soon improves dramatically—it’s glass until you return to the Zen Center on the return ride. Enjoy the next few miles—from the start of the good pavement to Petaluma Hill Rd. is the best riding on the route.

The pitch on the west side of the mountain is milder than what you’ve just done, so the descent is a peach. Descend to clearly marked Pressley Rd. and go L on Pressley, a wide, smooth thoroughfare that is surprisingly free of traffic. After a moderate climb, do 2.5 mi. of delicious sweeping high-speed descent—a real treat. Bail out onto flat, pretty valley grape and ranch land.At the intersection with Lichee Rd. the road changes its name to Roberts Ranch Rd. (or Roberts Rd.). Continue to the dead-end at Petaluma Hill Rd. Go R onto PHR.

PHR sounds small and hilly, but it’s dead straight, dead flat and heavily trafficked. It’s no huckleberry, but it’s over in 2.5 mi. and there’s a roomy shoulder all the way.

Turn R onto Crane Valley Rd., which becomes Grange Rd. somewhere. CVR is a large, sanitary two-lane, and you think it’s going to be more flat, but it includes a 1-mile climb that is unexpectedly steep (some 9-11%). It’s all shoulder riding, with considerable traffic. Not particularly fun.

CVR dead-ends at Bennett Valley Rd. Go R onto BVR. Shortly you see Sonoma Valley Rd. going off to the R—take it back to Pressley. This leg is slightly up on a pleasant, cultivated two-lane with houses and little traffic. At Pressley, retrace your steps back to your car. The climb up from there to the summit is shallower and the pavement is worlds better than the one you did coming out, so it’s quite nice.

At the intersection of Bennett Valley Rd. and Sonoma Mountain Rd. you have options. If you’re done with climbing, want to shave some miles, or want to avoid a steep descent on crappy pavement, continue on Bennett Valley Rd. back to Warm Springs Rd., and take WSR back to your car. BVR, as the name implies, runs straight through Bennet Valley, which is renowned for its cultivated beauty. It’s a steady dose of picturesque horse farms, oak canopies, mild ups and downs…pretty ideal riding, were it not for the traffic, which is fairly constant. The shoulder varies from generous to non-existent. There often isn’t much room, but the drivers seem tolerant and straight passing stretches are frequent. I didn’t feel threatened. Warm Springs Rd. is more of the same: flattish, very pretty, trafficky.

Shortening the ride: since the best riding is the west side of Sonoma Mountain and Pressley Rd./Roberts Ranch Rd., you can do them both as an out-and-back: start at the Roberts Ranch Rd./Petaluma Hill Rd. intersection, ride Roberts Ranch > Pressley > the summit of Sonoma Mountain Rd. and return. I promise you, you won’t be missing anything wonderful by skipping the rest of the route.

Adding Miles: Glen Ellen sits on the Trinity Grade loop version of our Cavedale ride, so you can easily add on Cavedale, which would make for a hefty day’s climbing. For a less demanding addition, ride the 5.5 miles of Hwy 12 up to Adobe Canyon Rd. and ride its 4 pretty miles (one way) up to Sugarloaf Ridge State Park and the observatory (1 mile of serious climbing).

Distance: 18.2 out and back
Elevation gain: 2350 ft

This is yet another sweet climb out of a Wine Country valley, this time out of the city of Napa. It’s a dead end, and it absolutely can’t be looped. It’s much like our other Wine Country climbs, but its road surface is better than some (about 60% of it is glass), and it’s manicured…that is to say, it looks landscaped, as if a professional gardener was maintaining it. So it’s very attractive and very clean. For much of its length it’s got a sparkling clean center line and sparkling clean fog lines—even a bike lane in the beginning—and the pretty oaks that line much of it look meticulously pruned. Fairly elaborate homes and vineyards dot the landscape. There is no sense of being in the outback or escaping civilization. So it’s prettier than our other area rides, but also more domesticated.

This isn’t a great ride for vistas—at the very top you can see north and east for some distance over barren, rolling hills, but until then, not much.

The workload is roughly the same as our other Wine Valley climbs, with all the hard stuff in the first and last thirds, the middle third being close to flat. There are some short 10-12% swells.

Though the area is more built-up than our other area rides, I still found next to no traffic—4 vehicles in 9 miles on the ride in. The route has many signs asking drivers to share the road, which usually is a sign of traffic, so maybe I just got lucky.

The first mile of so of Atlas Peak Rd. is big and busy and thoroughly uninviting. I skip it and park in one of the shoulder turn-outs by the Silverado Resort or the golf course, where parking is surprisingly easy. As you ascend, the road gets slowly narrower, less populated, and wilder, until finally you’re on a true one-lane road (I met a Fed Ex truck and it filled the road—I had to pull off) surrounded by open spaces and little home-spun vineyards. Halfway up the road surface, which has been glass, begins to break up, and it gets worse over the next 2.5 miles, then thankfully returns to glass for the remainder of the climb.

The road ends at a turn-around and a large gate that reads “Atlas Peak Ranch.” In case you’re in any doubt there is a sign reading simply “END.”

The descent varies from good to excellent, with the exception of the near-flat rough patch in the middle, which I just waited out.

Most of the estates along the route are set well back from the road, and many of them are reached by long, meandering side roads that are little more than paved trails. It looked like they would be fun to explore on a bike, but I didn’t try it.

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. Hwy 29 is a steep, very trafficky, curvy deathtrap for bikes (despite the bicycle icons painted on the road surface and the “share the road” signs). I wouldn’t dream of riding it, but obviously some cyclists do. 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.