Author Archives: Jack Rawlins

Covelo Road

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Distance: 58 miles out and back
Elevation gain: 5844 ft

This ride was suggested by Friend of Bestrides Brian.

This is a good, solid ride.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, though it has no extraordinary features.  It’s got some nice rollers, a very pretty, flat stretch through a fairly dramatic river canyon, one fairly easy climb, one somewhat harder climb, and a totally unremarkable town, Covelo, at the turn-around.  It’s 10 miles down the road from my beloved Branscomb Rd. ride, and I wouldn’t do this one until I’d done that one.

It’s the only paved road by which Coveloans can leave town, and the river attracts lots of water seekers in the summer, so traffic can be substantial.  I recommend doing it early in the morning or sometime other than summer or both.  Anyway, the Eel River Canyon is prettier in early morning, before the sun gets high.  The seven-mile stretch from the Eel River Bridge to Dos Rios is the ride’s best scenery, and it’s essentially flat, which makes it a rarity in Bestrides.  The elevation total gives the impression of a laborious outing, but I didn’t find it hard at all.  The only time you’ll work is the 2-mile hill just before the turn-around, and that’s never worse than 6-8%.

Highway 162 winds west to east across much of California and shows up in Bestrides more than once.  For instance, it’s the road from which the Bald Rock Road ride, northeast of Oroville, takes off.  Here we are at the western terminus, where it deadends on Hwy 101.  There’s a large dirt parking lot 1/4 mile up 162.  Ride to Covelo (KOH vuh low) on Hwy 162 (aka Covelo Road, a name I’ve only seen on maps); turn around and ride back.

The Eel River Canyon at sunrise—note the abandoned rail bed on the left bank

You begin with 8 miles of rollers.  In this world, some rollers are too small to notice, some are so large each uphill pitch kills all your momentum and enthusiasm, and some are just right, big enough to notice but small enough that you can power up the upslopes standing and feel buff at the crest.  Covelo Road’s rollers are pretty much ideal.  The scenery is conventional brush and small tree.  You’re following a creek, but you can’t see it.

After 8 miles you cross the Eel River Bridge and follow the river for 7 miles (to Dos Rios) through a moderately grand canyon that I think is quite fetching.  The pitch is about 1% down overall and seems flat except for a bump or two, so it’s no work at all, in either direction.  You’re in the midst of a rocky canyon in full sun, so if you’re out there on a hot summer afternoon, you will die.  (I did it in July at 7 am—perfect.)  On the plus side, you’ve got countless swell swimming holes to choose from, which is why the turn-outs are full of cars in the summer afternoon.  Seriously consider taking a swim suit.

Dos Rios is a tiny enclave of tiny houses 1/2 mile off the road (clearly signed, invisible from the road) with no services.

The riding along the river is nearly flat

At the Dos Rios Bridge the road leaves the river and begins to climb moderately for about 5 miles.  The road is a big, wide two-lane, clearly designed for 60-mph car traffic, so the excitement level is pretty low, but it’s pretty easy climbing—about 4-7%, with no tough pitches.

At the summit the road goes up and down, with some nice views, then drops for 4 miles and bottoms out onto the dead flat, dead straight road through Round Valley, a completely developed farming region that looks just like any other small farming valley in California.  It takes you to Covelo, a small but fully functional town I can find no reason to get to, so I like to turn around at the summit and save myself the 4-mile return climb, which is the hardest work on the route.

The climb up from the river—made for fast descending

The 5-mile descent back to Dos Rios, because the road is groomed for car traffic, is about as mellow as 30-mph corners can get, with big, manicured curves you can take at full speed without a care.  Don’t expect too much in the way of hair-raising.  If you’re timid about descending, you’ll love it.

Shortening the route: Start at the Eel River Bridge.  Skip the descent into Covelo.

Adding Miles: If you are set up for dirt, you can continue on Hwy 162 through Covelo, ride through Mendocino National Forest and Mendocino Pass, and descend (having returned to pavement) to Hwy 5 on a road that has nice moments.  Also mostly in the dirt, the Laytonville-Dos Rios Road, a true back-back-country road, will take you on an adventure from the one town to the other on a tread not much bigger than a driveway.  From the Dos Rios Bridge, ride into Dos Rios and just keep riding on the only road out of town.  I haven’t done it, but I’m told it’s done.  You’re 10 miles from the Branscomb Road ride, which takes you to the ocean.

Afterthoughts: There are no services and no water source between Hwy 101 and Covelo.  Plan your water carefully, especially if you’re turning back before Covelo.  I take a third water bottle and stash it at the Dos Rios Bridge for the last 15 miles.  There’s nothing at the Hwy 101/Hwy 162 junction either.

A local told me Covelo Road was famous for car crashes.  He also mentioned that there’s an enormous Indian reservation just outside town.  Draw your own conclusions.

Bald Rock Road

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

This is another of those “worthwhile if you’re in the area” rides.  It’s 22 miles of small two-lane back road through pretty but not extra-special Sierra foothill forest.  You pass through a small but bustling mountain community, Berry Creek, which unfortunately makes the first third of the route surprisingly trafficky for a foothill road.  You will do some work—2100 ft of gain in the 11-mile ride out—but it’s never steep.

Two features elevate this ride above the perfectly pleasant.  First, rollers.  The road is all up and down, so much so that there is only a 1465-ft. difference in elevation from start to turn-around but 2100 ft of vert on the road (in other words, you ride every vertical foot 1.5 times).  This has its charm.  It means the climbing on the ride out is constantly interrupted by little descents, and on the ride back the descending comes in short, fast runs interrupted by short risers, so about the time you think you have to brake the contour does it for you.  The riding experience is ever-changing.

Second: Bald Rock, the greatest rock formation the world has never heard of (see photos at the end of this post).  Take slippers or sandals and plan to get off the bike and explore—you will be enchanted.

Begin where Bald Rock Road takes off from Highway 162, just south of Berry Creek.  There is no attractive place to park, and the first 1/2 mile of Bald Rock Rd. is steep, so you might skip it and drive to the large dirt turn-out just up BRR.  Ride to where Bald Rock Rd. returns to Hwy 162.  Turn around and ride back.  You can start at the turn-around (look for the Brush Creek Work Center sign on 162), but it gives you 75% of the descending up front and leaves the hard climbing until the end of the ride, which I never like.

Between Zink and Zink

In a couple of miles you enter Berry Creek, a tiny mountain community (a country store, a church, a school, a community center) that used to be famous for illegal pot growing (and the consequent frequent murders) but is now busily recasting itself as a bedroom community.  Hence the hustle and bustle, which can seriously impact the vehicle traffic.   Once through “town,” traffic is essentially non-existent.

Near the top

The best part of the ride—best woods, best road contour—is from the Zink Rd. turn-off (unmissable on your L) to the return of Zink Rd. (a little less unmissable, still on your L) several miles along.  (Zink Rd. itself is dirt after 2 miles, and highly rideable if you’re set up for dirt, though why you’re prefer it to Bald Rock I don’t know—it would just mean you missed the best part of the ride).

Midway into the ride you pass the trailhead for Bald Rock (unmissable large sign on your L).  Stash your bike.  A dead easy quarter-mile walk takes you to a mind-boggling granite bluff covering several acres on the lip of a cliff overlooking the Feather River Canyon.  It’s as good as anything in Canyonlands or Arches National Parks (see photos below).  You’ll probably have the place to yourself.  Why it isn’t on every travel magazine’s bucket list, I don’t know.

Back on your bike, the 1/2 mile or so of road surrounding the trailhead is as good a short stretch of riding as there is anywhere—a perfect 25-mph slalom through picture-book woods.  You’ll want to do it two or three times.

Adding Miles: The pickings are slim.  Bald Rock Rd. takes off from Hwy 162, which features briefly in our Oroville to Forbestown ride.  It goes to cool places—Bucks Lake and Quincy—but in the main it’s a ton of climbing on endless, unvarying, straight pitches on the shoulder of a wide, busy road.  I hate it, though the vistas can be good.

You can add 4 miles by riding the 2 miles of paved Zink Rd. out and back.  An out and back on Rockefeller Rd. will also let you add some miles before turning to gravel.

Several fine rides are a short car trip away (see the Bestrides locator map).

Bald Rock

Bald Rock

Bald Rock

Philo-Greenwood Road

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Distance: 21 miles one way
Elevation gain: 2835 ft

This is one of seven rides (all detailed in the Adding Miles section of the Mountain View Road ride) 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.

This road parallels Mountain View Road, which is 5 miles to the south, and the two are similar.  Both roads are trips through standard coastal pine/redwood forest with a good dose of 8-10% climbing.  This one is less isolated that MVR (a vehicle a mile or more), but it’s prettier and easier and it has a better road surface (though it’s still often poor). It  makes for a shorter loop if you’re returning on Hwy 128, so if I was just doing one of the two I’d go with Philo-Greenwood unless I wanted a) a bigger climbing challenge, b) more Hwy 1 riding, or c) to visit Manchester.   I’ve mapped the ride as one way because I assume you’ll want to return on 128, which is covered in the Mendocino/Comptche ride.  The Philo-Greenwood/Cameron Road/Hwy 128 loop is 42 miles.

Begin riding at the intersection of Hwy 128 and Philo-Greenwood Road just north of Philo.  The community of Philo is little more than an apple stand (Gowan’s Oak tree—can’t miss it, worth a stop for the apple juice), so you might want to ride from Boonville, 5 miles south of Philo, thus adding about 12 miles.

Philo-Greenwood Road

Head down PGR.  Almost immediately you pass the turn-off to Hendy Woods State Park, a lovely stand of old-growth redwoods that charges a substantial fee.  Just past HWSP, you begin a hard 4-mile climb, an unrelenting grind that averages 8% but is frequently 10-12%.  Almost all of the hard work on the ride is right here.  The forest is very pretty—prettier, I think, than Mountain View Rd., though the fact that I rode it after a rainstorm may be the reason.   Watch for glimpses of the Navarro River watershed through the trees on your right.  Right after the very first little downhill, at 3.5 miles, Signal Ridge Rd. goes off to the L—consider riding it (see details in Adding Miles).

When the bulk of the climbing is over, you roll pretty constantly up and down through more pretty woods, with pitches up to 8%, past scattered farms to the intersection of PGR and Cameron Rd, 15.2 miles in.  The road surface, which in the beginning randomly varies from good to poor, deteriorates as you approach the intersection, until in the last miles it’s consistently rough.

At the intersection you have a clear choice.  PGR plummets down to the sea (the intersection is exactly at the lip of the precipice, with a sign reading “10% grade (down) 2 miles”).  Cameron, to the R, goes to the same ocean in over twice the distance (5.6 miles vs. 2.5 miles) and thus is half as steep.   So stay on PGR if you want high drama and smoking brake pads, you want to see Elk (a tiny community with a good diner), or you want to ride the very nice stretch of Hwy 1 north to Hwy 128.  Go right on Cameron if you want a relatively mellow and much straighter descent (15-25 mph).  I’ve mapped it the mellow way.  The road surface remains less than you’d wish but never awful.

Cameron Road

Cameron meets Hwy 1 about 1 mile south of the Navarro River bridge.  Just south of the bridge, a paved road goes into Navarro Beach, a sweet patch of sand where the river flows into the sea.  You’ll find interesting historical placards (it’s part of the Navarro Redwoods State Park), good sea stacks, and driftwood sculpture—well worth a detour.

Shortening the route: Unless you cut PGR drastically short, you won’t save much by turning around, because Hwy 128 is much easier riding that returning on PGR.  I’d opt for the full PGR/128 loop.

Adding mIles:  I fully expect you to return to Philo via 128, whose praises are sung in the Mendocino/Comptche ride.  If you want to make an epic out of it, turn south at the west end of PGR and return on Mountain View Rd.  For other rides in the area, see Adding Miles in the Mountain View Road post.

Three and a half miles into our ride, Signal Ridge Rd. goes off to the L and goes 1.5 miles before turning to dirt.  I know it’s just 3 miles out and back, but it is a precious three miles I strongly encourage you to do—a true one-lane road that dips and dives deliciously through gorgeous woods on its way to the few cabins that live up the road.

The Navarro River entering the sea

Carquinez Loop

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Distance: 24-mile loop
Elevation gain: 1700 ft

This loop is a classic Bay Area cycling club ride, and it offers a number of pleasures: a lovely, rambling section of the San Francisco Bay Trail, much of it closed to cars; two small, charming Bay Area communities and proximity to a third; a train; two grand bridge crossings over the Carquinez Strait, where the Sacramento River Delta empties into San Pablo Bay; two old urban cemeteries; a nice optional climb, and swell views of the Strait from every angle.  It’s mostly moderate up and down, neither easy nor hard (the Scenic Drive leg of the ride is 14 miles, 1370 ft of gain, out and back, for instance).  There are about 4 miles of unrewarding, rundown residential slog.  There is no reason why you can’t ride the loop in either direction, though everyone seems to go counter-clockwise.


(RWGPS shows the bike trail through the Benicia State Rec Area as unpaved.  It’s paved.)

Take the Crockett/Pomona St. exit from Hwy 80 coming from the south.  Continue down Pomona and park in the little Park and Ride parking lot you run into almost immediately on your R.  Continue down Pomona on your bike.  You’ll ride straight through downtown Crockett (or “Sugar City,” as they call themselves, from the C and H sugar plant on the shore) and continue out the other side.  After about a mile Pomona turns into the Carquinez Scenic Drive and the best part of the loop begins.  It’s a sweet little back road that’s been converted into something like a multi-use rec trail.  It’s open to cars for a stretch at either end, but the center section of roadway, the George Miller Regional Trail, is closed to cars, so there’s no through traffic and thus almost no traffic at all on most of it.  The road traverses the steep sidehill overlooking the Carquinez Strait, and the vistas of the Strait, the sailboats and working ships thereupon, and the Benicia-Martinez Bridge to the east, are guaranteed to make your soul sing.  Along the water’s edge, far below you, there’s an active railroad line, so you’re likely to see a train huffing past.  In the middle of the ride you’re simultaneously in or on the George Miller Trail, the Carquinez Scenic Drive, the San Francisco Bay Trail, and the Carquinez Strait Regional Shoreline, if you’re into labels.

Carquinez Scenic Drive

The road surface where the road is open to cars is often rough, but the GMRT itself is glass.  There are occasional picnic tables along the route, so you can bring lunch.

From Scenic Drive looking east, toward Benicia Bridge, with Benicia on the L and train passing below

There are two attractive spurs off this leg: the road to Port Costa and McEwen Rd.  Port Costa is a tiny river port town turned artistes’ enclave consisting of a hotel, a restaurant, a saloon, a mercantile, a hat shop and a couple other things, well worth a visit.  You could almost throw a blanket over the entire town. The detour adds almost no work to the ride—Port Costa is a very gentle 1/2 mile off the main route. Watch for the small sign marking the turn-off on your L.

Soon after the Port Costa turn-off you pass McEwen Rd. on your R.  Take it if you want to do a pretty and invigorating (code for “hard”) creekside climb on a very small road.  It’s steep at first, then mellows to moderate, then mellows further to sweet open rollers.  At the top of McEwen you have two choices.   You can turn L and take perfectly pleasant Franklin Canyon Rd. into Martinez—if you do, follow Alhambra into town to get back on our route.  Franklin Canyon is a relaxing, gentle, steady descent on a big, straight domesticated two-lane road, so if you want more drama turn around at the top of McEwen and ride back down the way you came, then continue on the Scenic Drive.

If you’re a fan of old cemeteries, you’ll pass two nice ones on the CSD, across from each other: the Alhambra Cemetery and St. Catherine of Siena.  The former is locked, but can be accessed by requesting permission from Martinez or hopping the fence.  St. Catherine’s is open and has a much more romantic ambience.

Benicia Bridge bike/pedestrian lane

The serpent in this Eden is motorcycle traffic.  The Port Costa area is motorcycle central, and, while the George Miller Trail keeps them from through-riding the Scenic Drive, it doesn’t keep them from riding the first miles and up and down McEwen, which they love to do.  The last time I rode McEwen on a weekend, I was passed (on a very small, windy road) by at least 200 motorcycles.  The last time I rode it, on a Friday in March, I never saw a motorcycle.

The Scenic Drive debouches in Martinez, a full-size town with considerable character.   John Muir’s house is very near where you enter town.  Supposedly the martini was invented here. The downtown section is vital and charming, and I encourage a detour down Main St. just a couple of minutes off our route.

From here on, the route is complex.  I’m not going to guide you through all the turns.  Take a good map, my route, and a phone with googlemaps, and find your way, only abiding by one principle: stay as close to the water as you can.

View west from Benicia Bridge, with Carquinez Bridge in far distance

Ride straight through  Martinez on Escobar until it’s time to hop on the Benicia-Martinez Bridge (you’ll know immediate if you pass it).  Cycling across bridges can be hairy, but this (and the Zampa Bridge later) has a lovely, wide, separated bike/pedestrian lane that make the trip as unthreatening as a huge bridge can be, and the views downstream through the Strait to the Carquinez Bridge to the west, usually enhanced by a huge tanker or two at work below you, are grand.

From Zampa Bridge Looking west over San Pablo Bay—Mt. Tamalpais on the L horizon

Ride into the quaint, upscale village of Benicia.  My route takes you off the through-route long enough to ride through the waterside downtown and out onto the town pier, where you can commune with the gulls and use the good bathrooms at the pier’s end.

Once out of Benicia, the quality of the rides drops off and continues to deteriorate as you approach the outskirts of Vallejo, no one’s favorite city.  Be sure to find the Benicia State Recreation Area and the bike path that runs through it to minimize your time on the large and busy Columbus Parkway.  Then slog it out (my route has no virtues other than directness—feel free to find another) until you enter the bike/pedestrian lane crossing the Zampa Bridge, which, in a brilliant stroke of socialist fervor, is named after, not some cigar-chomping politico fat cat, but an actual guy, Al Zampa, an iron worker who lent his sweat to the building of several Bay Area bridges and actually fell off the Golden Gate Bridge during its building.   There’s a moving plaque detailing his accomplishments at one end of the bridge.  And check out this magnificent picture of Al.

From the bridge, the views (again to the west) are breath-taking, though now you’re gazing at the expanse of San Pablo Bay and Mt. Tamalpais in the distance.   Once off the bridge, you’re a stone’s throw from your car.

Shortening the route: If you’re out for an easy, quiet day, ride from our starting point to Martinez and back (16 miles).  If you’re out for something even easier, drive to the gate blocking cars from entering the GMRT (there’s a parking lot) and just ride the GMRT out and back.

An alternative route to ours, one that skips both bridges and the Vallejo morass and adds a climb, is to ride out the Carquinez Scenic Drive, go up McEwen, take Franklin Canyon into Martinez, and take the CSD home.  Incredibly, this route is only slightly shorter than the full loop—21 miles—and is more work.

Local color along the Benicia shore (tide’s out)

Adding Miles: From Martinez you can easily ride south via the big but pleasant Alhambra Ave. to the network of roads around Briones Park—Alhambra Valley Rd., Reliez Valley Rd., Bear Valley Rd.—all worth riding, and continue on until you connect with the southern sections of the Grizzly Peak Boulevard to Redwood Road ride.

Caliente Loop

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Distance: 44-mile loop
Elevation gain: 4320 ft

(A Best of the Best ride)

If you’re like me, you think Bakersfield is flat, which is what you see driving through on Hwy 5.  But a Friend of Bestrides wrote in to say I had to overcome my prejudices and try the area.  It turns out that Bakersfield, while it is smack in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley, is at the Valley’s southernmost tip, so it’s surrounded closely on 3 sides by mountains like the Tehachapis, and there are good roads in those mountains.   The Caliente Loop is the jewel in the crown.

But there’s a problem: I can’t decide which direction is better.  I rode the loop counter-clockwise.  Most locals ride it clockwise.  I’ll describe my ride; then we’ll weigh pros and cons of the two directions.

The loop (called Lion’s Trail by the locals) is essentially three different rides: a gentle meander through a small, rocky creek canyon; a flat and rolling leg across a wide valley dotted with horse farms and sagebrush, and a descent of epic proportions with vistas of the canyons on both sides of the road.

Caliente Creek Road in October

This is a ride you want to time correctly, and the window is small: ideally you’d ride in the spring, when the creek you’ll follow for the first 20 miles is babbling and the grassy fields of the second leg are green.   But spring means spring run-off, and any significant run-off closes the road, because Caliente Creek Rd. has several places where high run-off water flows right over the roadway.  I’d expect to find a “road closed” sign and ford some streams any time before the dry season.

Summer poses its own problems.  Bakersfield in the summer is hot and often windy, and the middle leg through Walker Basin is totally exposed.  On a typical summer day I’d start early enough to get through Walker Basin by 10 AM.

One more word of warning: you will notice the road surface is sprinkled with the remains of dried cow patties. Cows put them there.  This is open range, and you may meet cows standing in the middle of the road at almost any point.

Caliente Creek Rd, with typical creek crossing

Park in the “town” of Caliente, which is a tiny post office and around 20 unprepossessing houses.  On the way there, assuming you’re driving from Bakersfield, you’ll see the turn-off to a road with one of my favorite road names: Weedpatch Highway.

The first 16 miles or so from Caliente are easy, but conserve energy, because you’re going to climb almost without interruption for 22 miles, and the last 6 miles are taxing.

Ride the 3 miles to the Y of Caliente Creek Rd. and Caliente Bodfish Rd.  (clearly signed, as Cal Creek Rd and Cal Bodfish Rd).  Turn R onto Caliente Creek Rd.  It’s an easy grade up through a scenic and charming little canyon—my favorite part of the ride.  It’s a classic desert canyon, with bold rock formations, sycamores, and impressive cottonwoods.  

The canyon is almost people-free, but at “Lorraine,” which is only an intersection with Indian Creek Rd. (signed), the canyon widens, the area becomes more domesticated, and houses become common.  The land gets flatter and more open and the population and affluence level keep increasing until Twin Oaks, when you’re in the land of high-end “equestrian” training facilities.  Twin Oaks is a real community, with a general store (now closed), a second-hand store, a school, a cafe (Tog’s, which I couldn’t find), an absurdly large contemporary church, and even a town sign.  Everything but residential streets (everybody has a ranch).

Walker Basin Road

Around Twin Oaks the pitch increases substantially, and from there to the summit at 22+ miles in you will work.   The summit follows a series of false summits, but it’s unmissable: Piute Mtn. Road takes off to the R (signed), and signs tell you that Cal(iente) Creek Rd is ending and Walker Basin Rd is beginning.

Walker Basin is a large open valley surrounded by hills—classic high desert, mostly unpeopled but with a few hardscrabble ranches.  After the summit you descend to the valley floor, which is relatively flat and straight and the scenery OK or great, depending on how you feel about sagebrush desert.  

The descent on Cal-Bodfish Road—MUCH steeper than it looks

At mile 29 you have your first significant intersection since you turned onto Caliente Creek Rd., a 90-degree L turn from Walker Basin Rd. onto Walker Basin Rd.—clearly signed, just like that.  Take it.  In 3 miles of easy riding you T into Caliente Bodfish Rd.  Go L.  You’ll do a 2-mile, 700-ft climb (tough this far into the ride if you’re as tired as I was), roll for a couple of miles across the summit, and drop into the descent, which takes you all the way back to the Caliente Creek/Caliente Bodfish intersection, which you rode through before.

View from the descent

This descent is simply astonishing, a seemingly endless series of steep-to-very steep esses, sometimes on a ridge spine with breath-taking views of the canyons on either side of the road, sometimes deep in gorgeous tree-and-rock-wall forest.  It would be one of the top descents in Bestrides were it not for two problems: 1) early and late it’s magnificent, but in the middle miles it’s so steep all you can do is grab your brakes and pray they don’t overheat—not much fun if you still have rim brakes; and 2) the road surface is often badly broken up, so you’re constantly having to abandon your line through a turn and improvise a new one, which means you have to go slow—again, not much fun.  Joe in the comment below says the lower half has been repaved, which helps. As it is, it’s still pretty mind-boggling.

From the intersection with Caliente Creek Rd it’s 3 miles back to the Greater Caliente Area and your car.

Which way to go?: See the vigorous debate about this in the comment section, with me on one side and everyone else on the other.  Make your decision by the kind of climbing you like to do.  Clockwise puts all the climbing in two pitches.  The first, 3 miles in, is a monster—7 miles with lots of 10% stuff.  The second is a more moderate climb out of Walker Basin.  Everything else is down.  Counterclockwise spreads the climbing over 24+ miles of route, so the pitch averages less than half that of the other direction, and the climbing is never brutal.  Wind direction may also factor in your decision, since Walker Basin is open and largely flat and the prevailing westerly is in your face on the counterclockwise route.

Shortening the route: Start at the intersection of Caliente Creek Rd. and Caliente Bodfish Rd.  Ride to the Indian Creek Road intersection.  Turn around.

Adding miles: Bestrides commenters offer up several great suggestions for routes below.  Other local routes are at https://kernwheelmen.org/routes/, though the heartless Kern Wheelmen require you to join the club (in other words, pay them) before you can access the site.  Popular rides are Breckinridge Rd. and Hwy 155/Evans Rd from town to Greenhorn Summit, both big climbs.  Hwy 155 is a moderately tame road and I don’t find that I need a ton of it.  A shorter version of the Hwy 155 ride starts in the town of Woody (named for a guy who last name was Woody) and immediately goes uphill for 6 miles of moderate work.  Those 6 miles are a hoot coming down, so it makes for a nice 12-mile, one-hour+ outing (see photo below).  

The area around and north of 155 is full of roads all worth riding: Portuguese Pass, Hot Springs Road, Sherman Pass Road, and everything near to or connecting them.  The drawback is, everything in this area is geologically and botanically similar (rolling grassy hills and small canyons dotted with rock outcroppings and oaks), so one road is much like another, and after a while I want to see something else.  I’d suggest going with the smallest road I can find, but that’s me.

One quirky little road I really like and you’re unlikely to find on your own is the 9 miles of Woody Rd between the town of Woody and Tule Rd.  It’s deserted, with a road surface that’s a bit beaten up but totally rideable, a wonderfully random contour, and some dramatic rock clusters I found nowhere else in the area.  To the west you have a vista overlooking 30 miles of featureless grassy mounds.  Don’t take the road’s name literally—there isn’t a tree anywhere near your route, so don’t ride it on a blistering summer day (see photo below).

Deserving of mention for sheer audacity is Deer Trail Drive (aka Deertrail Drive and The Bear, for obvious reasons), a climb on private property that’s 9 miles long and averages 10.6%!  I haven’t done it and have no intention of doing it.

Highway 155
Cows are an ever-present possibility on the Caliente Loop
Woody Road

Parkfield Grade

1 Reply

Distance: 19 miles out and back
Elevation gain: 2770 ft

This is another of those rides that has location going for it.  What else are you going to do if you’re stuck in Coalinga?   It’s a classic climb from the lip of the Hwy 5 corridor up 10 miles through hardscrabble hills of grass, rock, and oak.  The scenery is quite lovely in its way.  It’s at its best in spring when the grassy hills are green.    Grand vistas of the San Joaquin Valley below abound.  The road surface is sound (which is all you can ask, since no one uses this road save the rare ranchers who run a few head of cattle on the hills), and, while the pitch is a tad monotonous, the back-and-forth contour is constantly stimulating.  It’s a fair amount of vert (2000 ft in 6 miles), but it’s just a steady moderate effort, never steep enough to be a grind.  The road turns to dirt at the summit, which will keep most cars out of your playground.  All in all, a thoroughly rewarding little outing.

Avoid this ride (and Hwy 189) during periods of hot sun—it’s fully exposed.  In summer, ride only in early morning.
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East Carmel Valley Road/Cachagua Road

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Distance: 61 miles out and back
Elevation gain: 5860 ft

(A Best of the Best ride)

This is a fairly big, pretty ride through two lush valleys and over three moderate summits. The cumulative elevation gain is substantial, but except for those three ascents the climbing is pretty mellow.

East Carmel Valley Road is the name of Carmel Valley Road east of Carmel Valley Village.  You could add miles by riding the first 11.5 miles of CVR, starting at Hwy 1, but it’s all 4-lane, fast, aggressive, over-developed, trafficky shoulder riding.  Pretty unpleasant, and, while the scenery is nice, it’s nothing compared to what’s on our route.  East of the Village the valley narrows, the valley walls steepen, the traffic lessens and slows down, the people thin out, the foliage gets denser, wetter, and prettier, and the road dwindles until it’s finally a centerline-less, shoulderless back road of exceptional beauty and charm.  The road surface varies from good to poor, often poor enough to be a hamper on your riding pleasure.

Traffic is an issue here.  Traffic isn’t heavy (3 cars/mile perhaps on a Friday afternoon in spring), but local drivers are hostile and impatient.  Sightlines and passing lanes are poor and there’s no shoulder.  So timing is everything.  The last time I did the ride, on a beautiful Sunday midday in spring, I saw 1 car in 15 miles.  Traffic lightens the further east you go, and, as always, the worst time for traffic seems to be 4-5 pm.

Cachagua Road (which means “place of grass” in—you guessed it—Mapudungun) is an alternate to 12 miles of CVR which takes off from it, crosses into the parallel valley to the south, rides along the valley, then climbs and descends the tall ridge that now separates the two valleys and returns to CVR.  It’s as pretty as CVR at CVR’s best, it’s quieter, smaller, and windier, and the road surface is better, so you definitely want to take it unless you’re tired and want to get home as easily as possible.  It adds about 4 miles and one substantial climb to the route.

Calvin, in the comments below, makes the point that there are no water sources on this ride.  So you’re looking at a long day without a refill.  You may have to drop a water bottle at the Tassajara Rd. intersection or knock on some doors.  Except for the leg from the summit to Arroyo Seco, the entire route is largely in forested shadow, however.

East Carmel Valley Road west of the summit

Begin in Carmel Valley Village, a charming little upscale artsy community with friendly folks and good, unpretentious places to eat, if you like towns where every shop is a wine tasting salon, a spa, or a fine arts gallery (22 wine tasting rooms in a very small town, according to the town map).  There are no public bathrooms in the village proper, but there are three bathrooms west of town: at the Chevron at the west end of town, at the visitor’s center/community center/museum/city park complex a bit further west, and Garland Regional Park still further west.

Ride east on East Carmel Valley Road to its end at Arroyo Seco Rd.  The first few miles do not impress.  You’re still in the Greater CVV Area, and it’s busy.  The further you ride, the lighter the traffic becomes, the smaller the road, and the prettier the scenery, until you get to the summit 18 miles in (Mile 30 on the mile markers, which start at Hwy 1).   These first 18 miles are mostly all up, but almost all of it is mellow.  (Reader Bruce points out that the MWGPS map erroneously goes off-route briefly at mile 3.7—ignore it.). At Mile 10 you get the first and only laborious hill on the ride out (1 mile).  Shortly after Tassajara Rd. goes off to the R (remember you saw it), you lose the centerline and things get really good.  The canyon is small here, the woods are deep, and you’re riding alongside the creek, crossing it repeatedly on little bridges.  It’s all up but never steep.

East Carmel Valley Road east of the summit

At the summit you have a decision: turn around or not?  The rest of the ride is very different from what you’ve been through.  This is the lee side of the hill, so instead of lush, dark oak canopies in a narrow creek canyon, you get down-at-heel ranches scattered on open, grassy hills and moderate vistas.   By the time you get to the turn-around, you’re practically in California desert.

The Cachagua climb—2.5 miles of perfection

Ride back to the Tassajara Road intersection.   The last 6 miles of the climb back to the summit are work.  The road from the summit to Tassajara is all blissful down.  Take Tassajara L, which is the only way it goes.  In a short while take Cachagua Rd on your R.  Cachagua descends very  gradually for a few miles through pretty woods and low-key farms along Cachagua Creek, then does a major climb—2.5 miles of c. 7%—through lovely woods, as you climb over the ridge between Cachagua and Carmel Valley Road.  The road meanders constantly and is never boring—a peach of a climb.  After summiting and cruising on the flats for a bit, you are treated to a 2-mile, 10% plummet back to CVR.  It’s fun, but it’s a lot of braking, so with rim brakes it’s stressful—I imagine with discs it would be a hoot.

Turn L on CVR and ride the 4.3 miles back to the Village.

Looking up the Cachagua descent (steeper than it looks)

There is an argument to be made for riding Cachagua in the other direction, west to east.   Instead of a moderately taxing climb and a steep descent, you would have a tougher climb (2 miles at 9-10%), followed by a wonderful descent at high but manageable speed.  It’s up to you.

Carmel Valley from the Cachagua descent

Shortening the ride: There are several ways to ride only a part of this route and still preserve the charm and the beauty:

1. Ride to Arroyo Seco Rd. and back on Carmel Valley Rd (57 miles).  This skips the big climb on Cachagua.

2. Ride to the summit on Carmel Valley Rd. and return, either via Cachagua or CVR.  This skips the climb back up to the CVR summit.

3. Ride to Tassajara Road and take it, then Cachagua, turning the ride into a lollipop that skips the CVR summit in both directions.

4. Since the best legs of the route are Tassajara to the summit and Cachagua Rd., the shortest route that bags both of them is, start at the intersection of Tassajara and Carmel Valley Rd., ride to the summit of CVR, return, ride the Tassajara/Cachagua/CVR loop.  That’s the short route I’d do.

Adding miles:   At the turn-around at Arroyo Seco Rd. you can continue on Arroyo Seco in either direction.  To the L/northeast, there are dramatic views of eroded hills for a few miles.  Ride until the landscape isn’t interesting any more, then turn around.  To the southwest the road is paved and the scenery dramatic until Arroyo Seco Campground, about 5 miles one way.

To the west of our ride, you’re only 5 miles down Carmel Valley Rd. from the jewel that is the Robinson Canyon Rd. ride. and about 14 miles from the Carmel entrance to the Seventeen-Mile Drive.  You’re about 3 miles east of Laureles Grade, an up-and-down pass locals ride constantly and I hate—hot, dull, trafficky shoulder riding full of debris.  Good vistas, though.

Buzzards on the north side of the Cachagua summit

Tepusquet Road

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Distance: 30 miles out and back
Elevation gain: 3170 ft

What is more delicious than discovering a great ride where you thought there was none?  Tepusquet Road, surely one of the better road names in Bestrides, was suggested to me by a Friend of Bestrides who has local knowledge of Santa Maria.  It’s a delightful surprise.  Rising out of the flat, dry, dusty agricultural fields, it climbs easily and steadily up through lush, shady canopies of riparian oaks to a pass, then makes a joyous little descent into the valley on the other side.   Rewards include grand vistas, lots of banked switchbacks, and a ton of solitude.  Not a life-changing ride, but a very good one, made all the more pleasant by how little you were expecting (or did I ruin the surprise now?).

This is an excellent ride for through-riders, because there’s good riding on either end—see Adding Miles below.

The oak canopy

Start at the intersection of Tepusquet and Foxen Canyon Rd.  (more on Foxen below) and follow the one and only road to its end, where it T’s into Hwy 166.   This being farm land, there are huge dirt shoulders to park on at the trailhead.  Immediately start climbing, and climb without interruption at a moderate pace to the summit pass at 9.6 miles.  The climbing is consistently mellow, and the trees are beautiful, but it is 10 miles of nearly unaltering pitch, which gets a little monotonous.  That lack of variety in the contour is the only negative about the ride.   There are houses (at least I saw a lot of mailboxes), but they’re unobtrusive, and the traffic drops to nearly zero soon into the ride.

Just over the summit looking north: your road is dead center

At the obvious summit, you could turn around, but I warn you, the ride back is straight enough and shallow enough to be thoroughly pleasant but not thrilling.  For thrill, keep going.   The back side of the ride is a notch steeper and much curvier for the next 3 miles, with some very nice banking in the constant switchbacks.  Here you can really practice your cornering skills.  You’re on the drier north side of the divide now, so the landscape is harsher, but the payoff is, great vistas of the grand valley before you and the hills beyond.  You can see your own road ahead of and far below you—always a thrill.

Climbing the back side: drier, curvier

When the descending peters out, it’s a short, mellow roll past backcountry ranches  to the dead-end at Hwy 166.  Turn around, do the challenging but not nasty 3-mile climb back to the summit (7-8%), and cruise back to your car at a descending pace so leisurely you’ll probably pedal a lot of it for grins.

Shortening the ride: Ride to the summit and turn around, from either side.  The north side gives you a more challenging climb and a much better descent, the south side gives you prettier greenery.

Adding miles: As I promised, you can keep riding in either direction.  At the southern end you’re on Foxen Canyon Road, a beloved-by-locals (but to my mind fairly ordinary) cycling route that runs to Los Olivos.  In Los Olivos you’re in the heart of the Solvang cycling network, discussed in the Mt. Figueroa ride.  Cat Canyon Rd. and Palmer Rd. are also reputed to be worth riding.

At the other end, Hwy 166 is a highway but not a frantic one, and you can ride west, then take surface roads paralleling Hwy 101 to the riding around San Luis Obispo, represented in Bestrides by the Huasna Road ride and the Prefumo Canyon Road ride.

Love those oaks

Maricopa Highway

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Distance: 44 miles out and back
Elevation gain: 4900 ft

This road goes by several names: the Maricopa Highway, the Jacinto Reyes Scenic Byway, and Highway 33.  The road contour isn’t fascinating.  It’s a “motorcycle road,” designed to be exciting at 60 mph but at 12 mph is fairly tame.  This ride is mostly about the scenery and the solitude.  It’s a remarkably isolated, stark, and rather grand high desert landscape, with varied and striking rock formations and large vistas, land that seems untouched by Man and so harsh that you understand why.

You can do this road several different ways.  You could ride the entire road as an out and back, starting at Meiner’s Oaks on the outskirts of Ojai and turning around at the intersection with Lockwood Valley Rd., giving you a 70-mile day with about 8000 ft of vert—big but doable.   But the southern 13 miles, from Meiner’s Oaks to Rose Valley Rd., are monotonous going up and not particularly exciting going down (about a mile north of Rose Valley Rd. there’s a small overlook where you can see several miles of what you’re in for heading south).   There’s one moment of interest, Wheeler Gorge, a small rock crevasse bisected by two tunnels, that you’ll be missing if you skip it.  You could ride the entire road one way from south to north, which starts the ride with a 30-mile climb and leaves you with the problem of shuttling back to your car.   You could ride the entire road one way from north to south—certainly better than south to north, because it minimizes the climbing and turns the southern 13 miles into a painless downhill—but you still have the shuttle problem.  The best route is the way I’ve mapped it: start at the Ozena Fire Station just south of the Hwy 33/Lockwood Valley Rd. junction, ride to Rose Valley Rd. and turn around.  This gives you all the good scenery, one good, short climb and one good short descent, and a lot of moderate rolling.  Of course this does leave you with the problem of how to get to the intersection of Hwy 33 and Lockwood Valley Rd, so the second best route is my route starting at the southern end, which involves you driving 13 miles from Ojai to Rose Valley Rd. and back.  Every route has its own inconveniences.

Park in the Ozena Fire Station parking lot.  You begin with a brisk but not killer climb (1500 ft in 5 miles), so you may well want to warm up first by doing some flat miles on Lockwood Valley Rd. (for which, see Adding Miles below). Then it’s rollers, mostly gradually down, to the turn-around.  You’ll do c. 2000 ft gain in the return to the summit (in 17 miles).

Looking south from just north of Rose Valley Rd., at the 13-mile climb I skip.

You can’t get off the road, so navigation is effortless, and there are no services, quaint country stores, or historical markers along the route, so there’s nothing to be on the lookout for, except the scenery around you.  Don’t miss the rock strata exposed by the cut at the very summit (see photo below).   If you are through-riding from north to south, do a lot of looking over your shoulder on the climb to and at the summit—by far, the best vistas are behind you.   As mentioned, a mile or so before Rose Valley Road there’s an informal pull-off spot with a stunning view of the next 10 miles of so of road (see photo)—it’s hard to miss.

We’re not talking Zion National Park or Bryce Canyon.  This isn’t limestone, so it doesn’t sculpt, and the native plantlife is brushy scrub.  Check the photos to see if it’s to your taste. I like it a lot.

Be self-sufficient—there’s nothing out there but rock.  When I did this ride I saw 3-4 cars.  It can get windy out there, and the predominant wind direction is from the north, which can make for a slog getting back to the summit, so check the weather and ride early if a northerly is predicted.

Shortening the route: Reread the route alternatives at the beginning of the post.  To shorten the route as I’ve mapped it, drive to the summit and ride south to the turn-around.

Hwy 33

Adding Miles: Lockwood Valley Rd., at your starting point, is a ride worth considering in its own right.  For about the first 20 miles from the Maricopa Highway intersection, it’s a desolate, isolated road with a constantly changing contour through desert country of surprising interest.  It’s primitive—the road surface is often poor, and there are several flash-flood gully crossings that are impassable after rains.

Strata at the summit

Paskenta Loop

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Distance: 52-mile lollipop
Elevation gain: 1790 ft

This is another of those rides worth doing if you happen to be in the area, but probably not worth driving any great distance to do.  It’s a pleasant roll through typical, often quite pretty westside (west of the Sacramento River) landscapes—orchards, cattle farms, small valleys, and  up into the first bumps of the Coast Range.  Its primary selling point is that it’s a few minutes’ drive off Highway 5, so it’s one of those rides in Bestrides you can use as a break while you’re driving between Oregon and Southern California (others being the Old Siskiyou Highway, Del Puerto Canyon Road, and some others).  It’s flat or gentle rollers throughout (2500 ft gain in 52 miles on my computer), but if you want to climb, a simple extension of the route will give you all you could ask for (see Adding Miles below).   Traffic is minimal, since there’s nothing along these roads but a few small ranches—my last time I saw 4 cars in the first 20 miles.

Two caveats: 1) for me, this is a spring-only ride.  In summer the hills are burned brown, the heat is intense, and the creeks are dry.  Once the rainy season begins the gravel leg (see below) can be a muddy quagmire.  In the spring you get almond orchards in bloom, green grass on the hillsides, running streams, and happy cows.  2) There is a 4-mile stretch of gravel, as notorious for Chico-area riders as is the pavé of Paris-Roubaix for Europeans, smack dab in the middle of the loop.  There’s no alternate route around it, and it can be unpleasant.  The gravel is completely loose, so you slide around a lot.  If the road has been regraveled recently, it’s like riding in rocky sand.  If there has been recent rain, the road becomes a bog.  Suffice it to say, timing is everything here.  If you’re determined to avoid the gravel, at the end of this post I’ll show you two gravel-free out-and-back routes.

You can start this ride anywhere along the route, and it’s equally good in either direction.  I start at the intersection of Corning Rd. and Black Butte Rd. because it’s the spot closest to Hwy 5, and I ride in whichever direction gives me a tailwind on the Black Butte Rd. leg, which is the straightest, flattest, and least scenic (read: most boring) leg of the route.  My description goes clockwise, since the prevailing winds are northerly.

The spring show: almond blossoms along Black Butte Rd.

Ride Black Butte Rd. to Newville Rd., passing almond orchards whose blossoms are spectacular for about two weeks in late February or early March.  Note the buffalo ranch on your R, with grazing buffalo in season.  Mt. Shasta is to the north, smack dab behind you and prominent on a clear day.  Mt. Lassen is to the east, over your shoulder on your L.  At Newville Road go R. You’re paralleling the shore of Black Butte Reservoir, but don’t expect lake views.  After two impressive rollers, the climbing for the ride is over unless you add the optional extension of Round Mountain Rd. (see below).

Coast Range in spring, from Black Butte Rd.

Cross a small bridge and begin the most bucolic leg of the ride, through a gallery of oaks along the lip of a small open valley.  You’ll pass the Newville Cemetery, with gravestones from the 1870’s.  Around mile 20 the road character changes from smooth, wide two-lane to battered country track, and you do 1.2 miles of nasty patches and potholes.

Newville Road

At 21.5 miles you cross another bridge at one of the ride’s more scenic spots and the road turns to gravel for the next 4 miles.  It’s mostly gradual uphill, which might be an argument for riding the route counterclockwise.  These 4 miles are not without their rewards: on your L along the length of the gravel is a valley walled by masses of small round mounds that look like the work of gigantic gophers.  Geologically fascinating and quite lovely in its way.

The infamous gravel

At 25 miles the gravel ends at a T at paved Round Mountain Rd.   Here you have a choice.  You can go R, skipping the out-and-back lollipop stick, thus avoiding some climbing and lopping 7 miles off the route.  But I go L, because that takes you up a draw through those round mounds you’ve had on your L for the past few miles, and I think it’s the best riding and best scenery of the entire ride.   The road rolls easily up and down and back and forth for 3+ miles, then sets in for a very long, uninterrupted, rather grim climb into the heart of the Coast Range.  There are great views of the Northern California Valley behind you, but not much else to offer besides exercise.  My route turns around at the base of the climb, at about 29 miles in.

Coast Range mounds at sunset, from Round Mountain Rd.

Retrace your steps to the intersection of Round Mountain and Newville and continue straight on Round Mountain to the hamlet of Paskenta, which is nothing more than a pleasant little country store where you can reprovision with ice cream or soda.  Stay on the main road through Paskenta and continue on what is called Corning Road after the Flournoy store until you close the loop at Black Butte Rd.  Check out the views of Mt. Lassen directly ahead of you as you ride.

Shortening the route and/or avoiding the gravel: There is no way to loop the ride and avoid the gravel, so you’re limited to riding out and backs on either side.  On the north side, begin at Black Butte Rd. and ride to Paskenta and up Round Mountain Road until you’ve climbed as much as you want, then ride back.  If you turn around at our turn-around point, this will give you 44 miles.  If you want less, start at Flournoy.  On the south side, I’d start at Black Butte Rd. and Newville (skipping Black Butte itself) and ride to where the road turns rough and return, for a total of about 22 totally pleasant miles.  If you’re doing this version, leave Hwy 5 at Orland and follow the signs to Black Butte Reservoir.

Adding miles: There is a lot of worthwhile riding nearby, none of it as easy as what you’ve done.  You can continue on up Round Mountain Road past our turn-around point for about another 5 miles of uninterrupted, substantial climbing before the road turns to dirt  (in a normal spring, you’ll hit impassable snow before that).  There is a similar road that climbs up into the same hills from the Paskenta intersection, Toombs Camp Rd, for about 12 miles of similarly uninterrupted, substantial pitch.  If anything, TCR is even more featureless and interminable than Round Mountain Rd.  Again, closed by snow until summer.  Serious locals do a hard training ride in which they ride one road to the dirt, then ride the other.

A whole other kettle of fish is Rd. 306, which heads south (on your L) shortly before Newville turns to gravel.  This road continues south for many miles, through Elk Creek, along Stony Creek, and through Stony Ford, Lodoga, and Leesville.  You can even continue on from Leesville to Bear Valley Rd, which turns to ridable dirt, goes through world-famous wildflowers in the spring, and passes charming Wilbur Hot Springs (which recently suffered major fire damage).  It’s all essentially flat except for Leesville Grade, and the spring scenery is excellent, but it’s not popular, for one reason: the road surfaces are often horrid.  My cycling club used to run centuries out there, and people would bring mountain bikes.