Distance: 38 miles, two loops
Elevation gain: 3600 ft.

The Nevada City/Grass Valley area has quietly become one of my favorite riding venues. This is Bestrides’ 6th ride in the area, and it’s more of the same very pleasant rambling foothill stuff. Nothing in this route is spectacular, and it’s not making any Best of the Best lists, but it’s a sweet day on the bike.

How does this ride compare with the other five? Willow Valley Rd. is still my favorite. Pasquale (in the Red Dog/Pasquale ride) still has the prettiest woods, followed by Lower Colfax. This ride has the best (really the only) dramatic descent, on Rattlesnake.

The ride is in fact two adjacent loops, and I’ve mapped them individually. The terrain for both loops is similar: gentle rollers past houses, farms, and horse ranches alternating with dry, scrubby foothill woods. The area is slightly to substantially built up, so you never have a sense of wilderness, but the woods are constant enough that I did almost the entire two loops without sunglasses, and although you’re rarely completely without cars the traffic is almost never a problem, excepting the first miles of McCourtney and the brief stints on the horrible Hwy 49.

If you’re only doing one loop, which one should you choose? The north half of McCourtney is the widest, straightest, most polished road and has the worst traffic. Rattlesnake has the most houses and the best descent, assuming you’re riding the loop clockwise, as you should. Allison Ranch Rd. is the smallest and least developed leg, a wide one-lane road with few houses and next to no traffic. Auburn Rd. is the next-smallest, next-least-developed, and next-untrafficked. If you’re a fan of small and undeveloped, consider riding a loop down Auburn and back up Allison Ranch.

Nothing is flat in the Gold Country, and the total elevation gain adds up, but pitches over 6% are rare on this route, no pitch lasts very long, and it never feels like work. All roads are downhill heading south, uphill heading north. The only leg that registers as a “downhill” is Rattlesnake starting 3 mi. in.

The McCourtney/Auburn loop rides equally well in either direction; the Rattlesnake/Allison loop is much better clockwise, to get the Rattlesnake descent. You could start either loop anywhere along the route, but I’ve mapped both so they start and end in Grass Valley, one of my favorite California hill towns. Try to schedule your ride during the Open Studios tour, two weekends a year when local artists invite you into their ateliers and display their works. And always check out what’s happening at the Center for the Arts, one of the best small music venues I’ve ever found.

The Rattlesnake Rd. leg is part of our Dog Bar ride.

McCourtney/Auburn Loop

If you’re riding from downtown Grass Valley, take Mill St., the town’s main drag, SW to McCourtney, which is just past Hwy 20. The first few miles of McCourtney aren’t great. The road is big, pretty straight, and surprisingly busy (at least it was on the Saturday afternoon when I rode it). About halfway to Lime Kiln Rd., all the bad goes away. The road gets small, pleasantly meandering, and close to traffic-free. You’re passing farms and horse ranches interspersed with patches of woods.

Turn L onto Lime Kiln Rd., which is more of the same good stuff. LKR dead-ends on Hwy 49, the area’s freeway, and it’s unpleasant—fast, hectic, noisy, and threatening. You’ve got a short mile of it to endure. Turn L onto Auburn Rd. (take care with the turn). Auburn returns you to McCourtney via some very nice, quiet, pretty, small-road miles. You’ll see signage indicating you’re on a route well-known to local cyclists. Once back on McCourtney, return to your starting place.

Rattlesnake/Allison Ranch Loop

Begin in downtown Grass Valley. Take briefly hectic Colfax Ave. under the highway. Colfax becomes Colfax Hwy, which takes you to Rattlesnake on your R. Rattlesnake climbs for a short mile, then descends, a delightful romp rather than a nail-biter, for 6 miles and dead-ends on Dog Bar Rd. It’s moderately built up, but all the houses have lots of trees and you’re in shade all the way.

Go R on Dog Bar for a stone’s throw, then L onto Alta Sierra Drive. ASD skirts the edge of a large, new, upscale settlement, and I was told that the warren of little streets within is a hoot to explore on a bike.

Alta Sierra Dr. dead-ends at Hwy 49, and again you’ve got a short stretch of cycling hell to endure, this time 1.3 miles. I THINK you can skip about half of it by exiting on Timberland Dr. and paralleling 49 on the surface road, but I didn’t do it.

Turn L at the enormous intersection that is Allison Ranch Rd. If the traffic is constant, there are pedestrian crossings with push-buttons that will make the L turn safe. ARR is the smallest, least-built-up road on either of our loops, the nearest you can get in this area to getting away from it all. At last you get to ditch the center line. You should see only a car or two. It’s officially a climb, but it’s so mild you’ll hardly notice. Which means this loop is one of those rare treats where you seem to do a lot more descending than ascending.

Allison Ranch Rd. turns into Mill Street , which takes you back to downtown Grass Valley.

Shortening the ride: I prefer the Rattlesnake/Allison Ranch loop. An even shorter loop would be to ride down Auburn and up Allison Ranch.

Adding miles: An embarrassment of riches. Rattlesnake takes off from our Lower Colfax ride route and is a part of our Dog Bar ride. From Grass Valley it’s an easy ride to our Bitney Springs ride, and you’re three miles from Nevada City and our Willow Valley and Red Dog/Pasquale rides.

Distance: 26 mi. out and back twice
Elevation gain: 1740 ft.

I used to turn my nose up at bike trails, but I’ve either mellowed or they’ve gotten better. For whatever reason, there are now four bike trails in the Bestrides ride list, in Sacramento, Redding, Monterey, and this one in Placerville, and some other honorable mentions in the Adding Miles sections. This one is a little jewel—fairly short, pretty, and beautifully designed and maintained. It’s a perfect 12-mph recovery day ride.

The trail goes west and east from Placerville, and Placerville is a charming place to begin and end a ride, so I’ve mapped it under the assumption that you’ll begin in town, ride to the western terminus, turn around and ride back through town to the eastern terminus and back to town.

This is a rail-to-trail conversion, and I’m usually not fond of such things, because they tend to be flat, straight, and monotonous, and go through industrial backyards when they’re in urban areas like this one is. They also tend to have stops at cross streets every 100 ft. The EDT has none of these problems. For much of its length, instead of setting the trail directly on the railbed, some genius left the tracks intact and put the bike path on the RR berm, thus providing a gently meandering, rising, dipping profile. The ride is almost entirely uninterrupted, assuming you’re willing to do a little risk-free stop-sign running. The scenery is mostly wooded and varies from good to lovely.

The trail has a very different character west and east of town. The west side is a 1-2% descent heading W. Immediately E of town the terrain pitches up, and so does the trail, climbing steadily at 3-6% for almost 9 miles (not sure how the railroad managed that). The west side passes by the Old Depot Bike Park, where you can watch BMX bikers do tricks, and ends at El Dorado Station, where there are remnants of old railroad cars and a facsimile of the original Station building, built in 1888.

The selling point for the trail is the Weber Creek Trestle, which the trail crosses a couple of miles W of town. Built in 1888, it’s 120 ft above the creek. It’s there, it’s real, but it’s actually just a wide boardwalk with wire fence rails on both sides. There is no moment when you can see the trestle beneath you, so if you didn’t stop and read the historical placard nearby you’d almost miss it. The placard shows you a photo of what you’re riding over.

The trail runs straight through town on Main St. for 1 mile. This is both delightful and harrowing, since Placerville is usually jammed on a summer weekend. Finding the trail leaving town headed W is easy—just pick it up at the unmissable Forni Rd. Finding the trail leaving town headed E is trickier. Turn L off Main onto Mosquito Rd. at a large and hectic intersection and keep your eyes peeled for the trail going off to your R.

Save some time for exploring Placerville after the ride. It’s a nice mix of Gold Rush California and modern trendy. There are lots of good places to eat, but I recommend The Original Mel’s at the west end of Main. It’s thick with kitschy “American Graffiti” culture, although it (of course) is not the Mel’s used in the movie, which was in downtown San Francisco and has been demolished. (I know, the movie is set in Modesto, which has no Mel’s but has a terrific original A and W drive-in).

Shortening the ride: Ride from Placerville to either trail end and return. The west side is easier than the east side.

Adding miles: When our route touches Mosquito Rd. in downtown Placerville you’re at the beginning of our Mosquito Rd. ride.

Distance: 29.5-mi. loop
Elevation gain: 2584 ft.

Half an hour’s drive east of Placerville and to the north of Hwy 50 lies the Crystal Basin Recreation Area. It’s bisected by Ice House Rd. running north and south, and there are at least 9 back roads with good riding connecting with it or nearby (I’ll list them in Adding Miles). One could easily spend a week happily exploring the possibilities. This loop is the best of them.

Let me repeat what I’ve said elsewhere in Bestrides: riding in the Gold Country north of Hwy 50 isn’t as good as riding south of Hwy 50. Above Hwy 50 is good; below Hwy 50 is great—more intense, more dramatic. But the riding in Crystal Basin is well worth doing.

The area is pretty undeveloped. There is little in the way of infrastructure other than campgrounds—no resorts (except Ice House Resort near Hwy 50), no canoe rentals, no summer homes, no back-country mercantiles. Yet I think the area gets a lot of use. I did my riding in late September. The roads were nearly empty but the campgrounds were busy, I saw lots of ATV trailers, and everywhere I rode there were informal campgrounds in the turnouts along the back roads. Large campgrounds line the lake, which suggests the area expects big numbers of campers in the summer. This matters, for the usual reasons, but also because the bike path along the lake is very narrow and would easily become unrideable if it was busy with walkers. As it turned out, I saw not one human being on it (!), and saw perhaps 4 vehicles on Peavine Ridge and Road #31. So I was largely alone, but riding in summer camping season might be altogether another matter.

Maps of the region, unless they are up-to-date, tend to show roads that are now paved as dirt. Streetview, which covers the area thoroughly, can be trusted. Every road I’m going to talk about, including in the Adding Miles section, is adequately paved or better.

Our loop covers three distinctly different kinds of riding: big, polished two-lane main road (Ice House), wide one-lane traffic-free backroad (Peavine Ridge Rd., El Dorado Forest Rd. #31), and adorable lakeshore bike path (along the northern shore of Union Valley Lake). Every mile is rewarding and well-paved. You could circumnavigate the lake entirely on roads, and if you’re prejudiced against bike paths you might be tempted, but in fact the bike path is what turns the ride into something special and is by far my favorite part of the loop.

The ride works equally well whichever direction you go, clockwise or counterclockwise, and wherever you start. It rides easier than the elevation gain total suggests. There are no services along the route, but the bike path takes you past several campgrounds where you could beg water.

(Despite the map above, the loop is entirely and nicely paved.)

(The “canyon” at Mile 8.6, where the road seems to hit 24% pitches, is RWGPS being confused about the lake’s dam. The top of the dam is, of course, flat.)

Park at the intersection of Ice House Rd. and Peavine Ridge Rd. This area doesn’t believe in signs with road names, but here you actually get one. Ride 2.8 miles down PRR, a small and essentially flat road. The area is in the process of being thinned for fire protection, so you may meet logging trucks and see piles of tree trunks, but the scenery is still pretty.

At Mile 2.8 you encounter your first intersection, a well-paved road to the R without a name. A sign tells you you’ve been on Peavine Ridge Rd. and if you continue straight you’ll be on Jaybird Canyon Rd. Another small sign points down the new road and reads “Bryant Springs Rd.,” and some maps show a Bryant Springs in that direction, but that certainly isn’t the name of the road. On Googlemaps it’s called El Dorado Forest Road, but that just means it’s a road in the El Dorado Forest, like calling Van Ess Avenue “San Francisco Street.” Paper maps often identify it merely as “31.” It is in fact El Dorado Forest Road #31. Take it. It goes for 6 mi. of pleasant road contour through lusher, prettier woods to Union Valley Lake. There are at least two unsigned forks—in every case stay on the bigger fork. RWGPS says that at the lake you pass a community named Raffetto, but I saw nothing.

Cross the little dam and continue on the one and only road to West Point Campground, where the bike trail begins. Turn into the CG and the trail is unmistakably on your L. It’s delightful riding, if it isn’t crowded—narrow and constantly meandering up and down and back and forth through picturesque forest with frequent views of the lake on your right. Ride the trail as long as it’s fun—it frequently crosses the entrance roads to campgrounds, and you can take any one of them to the L to get back to the main road. There’s a lot of it. I rode it to Wench Creek Campground and bailed, but there’s more. If you continue on past WCC, the trail seems to end at the campground and you have to ride halfway out of the CG to pick it up again. Everywhere else, it’s unmissably marked.

Once back on Ice House Rd., ride it back to your car. IHR is the highway through the region, the biggest, straightest, busiest, and most developed. As such I found it to be the least exciting leg of the loop, but it’s certainly pretty.

Shortening the ride: Just ride the bike path. No one seems to be sure where its east end is (probably around Jones Fork CG), but If you did all of it, you’d probably rack up close to 20 mi. out and back. For a more varied ride, ride El Dorado Forest Rd. 31 and as much of the trail as you wish.

Adding miles: As Monty Python would say, you are spoiled for choice. I count at least 9 other roads in the immediate vicinity of our loop, all worth riding. Most of them are primitive wide one-lane roads—easy for cars to pass but without centerline, fog lines, or shoulders. Miraculously they all seem to have OK to good road surfaces and should have no or next to no traffic. I haven’t ridden them all. Streetview covers most of them, so you can check them out. In no particular order:

1. Ice House Road. There’s a lot more of it than what our loop covers. It runs north/south for 58 mi. (out and back) all the way from Hwy 50 to Loon Lk., and is pretty much the same all the way: smooth, big, and busy—the only road in the area with noticeable traffic. If you start at Hwy 50, IHR begins with 7.5 mi. of uninterrupted moderate serpentine climbing, and I bet that 7.5 mi. is a hoot on the descent. It’s on my to-do list. A nice 15-mile break if you’re driving from to Lake Tahoe via Hwy 50.
2. Wentworth Springs Rd. The other “big” road in the area, it goes W from IHR north of our loop and runs for 31 miles (one way) to Georgetown. I find it classic so-so green-wall riding, fairly straight for a mountain road, and almost all down (going W). Georgetown is a cute little old town, worth a visit. Seven mi. west of Ice House Rd. on WSR is the unmissable Uncle Tom’s Cabin, founded 1864 (thanks, Brian).
3. South Fork Rd. Heading NW off IHR just above Wentworth Springs, it’s very small.
4. Ice House-Wright’s Lake Rd. A pleasant ride on a “tie road” between Ice House Rd. and Wright’s Lake Rd., all up heading E. Add 2 miles to get to Wright’s Lake, a very pretty little lake, IHWLR passes by Ice House Reservoir but you can’t see it unless you leave the route. Wide one-lane, with the occasional vehicle. You might be put off by Streetview’s refusal to cover it or Googlemaps’ refusal to name it, but it’s there and it’s completely civilized. No road name signs but follow the clear signs to Wright’s Lake.
5. Granite Springs Rd. Just south of and paralleling IHWLK, less well-known, less developed, and freer of traffic. I’m told it eventually turns to “good” gravel. Like IHWLR it runs between Ice House and
   Wright’s Lake Rd.
6. Big Hill Rd. It’s a short, tiny one-lane and it dead-ends, so I’d think you’ve have it to yourself.
7. Jaybird Powerhouse Rd. The continuation of Peavine Ridge Rd.
8. White Meadow Rd. Minimal one-lane.
9. Wright’s Lake Rd. From Wright’s Lake to Hwy 50.

Distance: 13-mile out-and-back
Elevation gain: 1015 ft

This is the easiest and perhaps the shortest ride in Bestrides. You will do next to no work. Not counting the small descent and climb at the beginning of the ride out and the somewhat more substantial drop at the end, it’s essentially flat. That’s because it’s a converted hydroelectric ditch.

So why is it in Bestrides? Because it’s pure bliss—gorgeous, tranquil, isolated, one-lane, with A-level pavement. As the friend who put me on to the ride said, ‘It would make anyone want to ride a bike.” So go do this ride. If you want more miles/work, Adding Miles below will show you how to do that easily.

Besides the fact that the ride is a joy, it has another selling point: despite it’s feeling deep in the outback, the start of the ride is only an incredible 0.6 mi. off Hi 80. So you can bag it in an hour on a break from driving to Tahoe or Reno.

Judging by the snowplow guidance poles lining the road, the area is under snow in the winter, so schedule your ride accordingly.

A mile or so from the beginning of the ride is Dutch Flat, a true, unspoiled, and charming Gold Rush town with a few buildings, a large and functioning hotel, and no tourists. Well worth a visit. If the museum is open, check it out—it’s a treat beyond your expectations. The hotel looks good on the website and says it’s working toward opening a restaurant (as of 5/25).

Park near the intersection of Drum Power House Rd. (named after a guy named Drum) and the oddly-named Main St. (it’s a continuation of the Main Street of Dutch Flat). There isn’t much room but you can squeeze onto the shoulder. After a few houses, the rest of the ride is through wilderness marked only by road signs on trees—lots of them: turn arrows, “blind curve,” “15 mph speed limit,” and the like. Given the fact that the road deadends at a power house of interest to perhaps 10 people in the state, you’ll have the road to yourself (I met two vehicles in the 13 miles, and wanted to ask each what they were doing there), which raises the question, Why are all these signs there? We’ve all ridden hundreds of back roads more hazardous than this one, but the signs imply your life is hanging by a thread at every turn. All I can figure is, there’s some government regulation requiring over-zealous signage on power house roads, or something. To kick off the ride on this note of caution, at the very start of the route you see 5 warning signs within 50 ft: road narrows, falling rocks, share the road, winding road, and ice. You also see a sign that reads (uniquely, in my experience), “Private Road. No 1-80 access. GPS is wrong! Dead end.” In other words, a general air of negativity. All this for a ride that’s about as risky and hair-raising as Disneyland’s Autopia.

The road serpentines sweetly along a steep sidehill in the Bear River canyon. The scenery is varied and all lovely: big canyon vistas, roadside oak canopies, conifer forests, dramatic rock cuts of white, grey, yellow, and black festooned with colonies of bleeding heart, succulents, and coral bells. In addition, there is much hydroelectric activity in the canyon. On the far canyon wall you’ll see a long flume supplying water to an invisible power plant and a giant pipeline carrying water over a ridge to the west. Ahead and far above you to your right you’ll see another giant pipeline bringing water over the southern ridge.

5.2 miles in, the road begins an unmissable descent, which continues almost to the end of the ride and takes you down to the powerhouse itself, which is without interest. The climb back out is substantial, so you should seriously consider turning around. If you want more work, there are better ways to get it (see Adding Miles below). Alexander (below) says the descent is now gated off anyway, so the decision may be made for you.

Shortening the ride: You won’t need to, but if you’re looking for effortless you can skip the climbs at either end.

Adding miles: This ride adds on to our Lower Colfax Rd/Rollins Lake Loop ride via a sweet 8.8-mile connector that goes from the eastern tip of our Rollins Lake loop along small roads paralleling Hi 80, through Dutch Flat, to our ride’s starting point. Doing the two rides plus the connector gives you 46 mi. of riding, and of course Lower Colfax’s northern end is near other good riding, as detailed in that ride’s Adding Miles section.

Distance: 19.3-mile lollipop
Elevation gain: 1900 ft

(A Best of the Best ride)

There are six Bestrides rides in the Grass Valley/Nevada City area—Dog Bar, Red Dog/Pasquale, Willow Valley Road, McCourtney Rd. Etc., Bitney Springs, and Lower Colfax Road.  They are all pleasant up-and-down strolls through nice woods—no grand vistas, no awe-inspiring crags, no waterfalls, nothing of the sort.  Each route has its virtues. Dog Bar has the best descent (on Rattlesnake), but it’s also the most built up.  Dog Bar goes to Grass Valley, a lovely town.  Red Dog/Pasquale and Willow Valley begin and end in Nevada City, a very lovely town, and both go through the prettiest woods. Overall the best of the four is Willow Valley. Despite its lack of spectacle, it’s absolute bliss mile after mile. I’d do it first, then any of the others.

This slightly odd-shaped lollipop introduces you to the fine roads to the east of Nevada City. The woodland scenery is choice, the road surfaces are good to great, the road contour is consistently interesting, and there is a pretty lake and an off-road dirt adventure in the middle of it all. Almost all of the roads are centerline-less one-lane plus or small two-lane, traffic is close to nothing, and almost all the climbing is mellow (unless you don’t want it to be—see below).

RidewithGPS does a poor job of navigating you through the off-road segment, so I’m going to lead you through it step by step. I encourage you to read that segment carefully, if only that segment.

Start at the corner of Willow Valley Rd. and Nevada St. in Nevada City. There is no street parking on Willow Valley Road, but there is plenty along Nevada St. Starting here means the ride ends with a fairly fierce little climb up Nevada. You can put the climb at the start by beginning at the corner of Boulder St. and Nevada. It’s up to you.

Ride up Willow Valley Rd. At first it’s built up with friendly, small houses, but surprisingly soon you’re in woods, and the occasional house is set back from the road where it doesn’t interfere with the sense of being in the forest. The road also sheds some width, from a modest two-lane with dividing line to a sweet one-lane plus. Climb all the way to the end of the road at Hwy 20.

All this climbing is fairly mellow (you’ll see moments of 10%), and if that disappoints you you can opt for more difficulty, thusly: At the intersection of Willow Valley Rd. and Scotts Valley Rd. (not Scotts Flat Rd.), our route goes L and stays on WVR. If you want to test yourself, go R onto SVR. The next mile+ is consistently 10+%, with plenty of 13%, and it’s hard. If you go that way, you’ll lop off the descent down Scotts Flat Rd. (see below), so I suggest that when you reach the intersection of SVR and SFR you turn L, ride up SFR, turn around at Hwy 20, and descend SFR, because it’s really sweet. But if the rigors of SVR have slaked your thirst for climbing, go R on SFR and continue on our route.

Assuming you stayed on Willow Valley Rd., as our map does, you deadend at Hwy 20. All the extended climbing is over—the rest is downhill or rollers. Go R onto 20 and ride the short stretch to the intersection with Scotts Flat Rd. Hwy 20 Is straight and busy but there’s plenty of shoulder so it’s no problem.

At the intersection of 20 and SFR, there’s a lot going on. You’re at a hub where many mountain bike trails meet, so you should see lots of MTB activity. There’s a famous little store that’s been there forever and caters to riders (mostly mountain bikers), the Harmony Ridge Market. They have good freshly-made sandwiches, along with the other usual stuff. Across the street is a new, snazzy resort, and in the parking lot is posted prominently a large map of the trail system in the area, which will inspire you to return if you’re a MTB-er.

Ride down Scotts Flat Rd. It’s a mellow and sweet descent on another small road in pretty woods and with houses set back discreetly among the trees. SFR is the main route from Hwy 20 to Scotts Flat Lake, so it may see a lot of recreational and boat traffic on summer weekends—I don’t know. I was there on Tuesday and Wednesday after Labor Day, and the road, campground, and marina were deserted.

Stay on SFR past the first of two recreational areas with campgrounds (signed with a small “Gate #1” sign and an arrow pointing you down the road toward Gate 2), ride past most of Scotts Flat Lake, and when you get to Gate #2—the marina and day use area—find Casci Rd. heading off on the L (clearly signed) and take it.

Casci Rd. is an odd duck that I really like. It hugs the shoreline, so you get lovely views of the lake through the shoreline trees, it looks manicured, and it’s absolutely barren of houses (except for one mansion). It’s lined with signs prohibiting parking, so it’s pretty quiet, but it’s also the downhill terminus for mountain biking trails coming down from Harmony Market, so on a summer weekend you’ll meet lots of MTB shuttle vans and pickups. They aren’t a problem.

Casci continues for several miles, but after it clears the lake it turns from flat to very steep and immediately turns to gravel, so at the unmistakable steepening our route turns around.

You may notice as you ride Casci that between you and the lake is a prominent parking lot. It’s the day use area for the lake, and you can access it by riding into the marina parking lot, riding through the campground via an unsigned, tiny road, and out the other side. It’s pleasant and adds perhaps a mile to your route. It’s one way to get your feet wet in the lake, but you don’t go there because Casci has lots of lakefront stretches that make getting to the water easy—you’ll see lots of umbrellas and cabanas.

Ride back to Gate # 1, a large and imposing campground with a large sign reading “Scotts Flat Recreation Area, Deer Creek Campground,” a very stout gate across the road, a guard station in the center of the gate, a large trailer for the campground host, and a lot of signage telling you you aren’t welcome. Believe it or not, you want to go in there.

Here begins our adventure. RidewithGPS glibly tells you to turn onto “Dam Rd.” There is no such thing. Instead, ride around the gate (There’s a little dirt path around the L end)., through the large campground and out the other end, continuing south and downhill toward the water. There is no signage to guide you, but common sense tells you where the dam has to be. Very soon you end up at a formidable gate across the lake’s dam. Here’s a map.

On the gate is the following remarkable statement: “Permission is granted for pedestrian or bicycle use for recreational purposes.” Thank you very much. Despite that spirit of accommodation, getting through or over the gate (you can’t go around) is difficult. There are two more gates like this one, so if you really hate lifting your bike over a gate, turn around.

Once over or through, ride across the dam on the rideable dirt dam top, enjoying the view of the lake. On the other side, several dirt roads set forth. Take the one uphill and directly in front of you (it’s rideable), and in 1/10 mile you’re at dam #2, the spillway dam. This one has fencing on the sides and a paved surface. On the other side, clamber over Gate #2 and take the dirt road, to the L. and along the shoreline. Eventually this road dead-ends at paved Pasquale Rd., but first you have to climb, at a pitch, for about 1/4 mile. On a gravel bike, it’s a sweet little burst of effort. On a road bike, it’s probably a walk. Either way, It isn’t painful—the woods are exquisitely beautiful in there, and the silence is delicious. At the end of the dirt road, climb over Gate #3 with another “Permission to pass…” sign and go R on Pasquale Rd.

We’re on the route of the Red Dog/Pasquale ride. Follow Pasquale to Red Dog, Red Dog (which turns into Boulder) to Nevada, and Nevada back to your car. Pasquale’s praises are sung in the other ride description. It’s one of my favorite bike rides anywhere, a uniquely charming contour through uniquely gorgeous woods. Red Dog, more developed, bigger, faster, is splendid in its own way, a 30mph+ ripper that’s the most exhilarating descending on the route.

As mentioned, Nevada St. is a stiff little climb, and if you want to ride around it just continue past it, cross the bridge into Nevada City proper, immediately go R onto Coyote St. and L on Washington St., which runs you back into Nevada after the tough climbing is over.

If you’ve already ridden the Red Dog/Pasquale ride and don’t want to repeat yourself (which I frankly cannot imagine), when you get back to Gate #1 don’t turn into the campground, continue west on Scotts Flat Rd., ride either down Scotts Valley Rd. (short and steep) or up Scotts Flat Rd. and down Willow Valley (longer, mellower, with climbing), and back on Willow Valley Rd. to your car.

Shortening the route: 1) Omit Casci Rd. 2) Ride the Scotts Valley Rd. cut-off instead of upper Willow Valley and upper Scotts Flat. 3) Ride to the Willow Valley Rd./Hwy 20 intersection and turn around. You can skip the Pasquale half of the route and ride back the way you came out, but I don’t think it reduces the mileage total. You can save a few miles by taking Scotts Valley Rd. on the return trip, but it’s a steep, fairly straight, and rather bumpy plunge I don’t enjoy.

Adding miles: Bestrides has 6 rides in the Grass Valley/Nevada City area,, all within easy bicycle reach of the others. See the Adding Miles section of the McCourtney Rd. Etc. ride for a list.

Distance: 18-mile loop
Elevation gain: 1990 ft

I am not a big fan of cycling in the region north of Placerville. The roads look great on a map—Lotus, Greenwood, Wentworth Springs, Georgetown, Gold Hill, Marshall, Cold Springs, and the rest of them—but they’re all bigger, straighter, more built-up, and busier than the roads in the southern Gold Country, and the landscape is tamer. Don’t get me wrong—most of the roads in this area are pleasant enough, just not Bestrides-special. Thus there are only two Bestrides rides in this area, this one and Mosquito Road.

And this one has its drawbacks. The big climb is a grind, two of the five roads on the route are busy with traffic, and the big descent is too steep to be fun unless you have disc brakes. It’s also short, though I will show you one way to extend the route in Adding Miles below, and it links up easily with our Mosquito Road loop, which is a better ride.

Still, it’s in Bestrides, so it obviously has merits, namely two small, deserted roads, one sweet wooded meander, a great swimming hole, proximity to a pleasant, under-the-radar Gold Country town (Garden Valley), and an interesting preserved 49er village at the heart of California’s history as a starting/stopping place. Also, the two unpleasantly busy legs are both very short.

The numbers suggest the ride is a moderate climbing effort, just over the 100-ft-gain-per-mile benchmark, but it’s harder than that, because almost all of the 2000 ft of gain is in one 2.3-mile pitch.

You could ride this route backwards. You’d replace a 8-12% climb with a 12-16% one, and replace a 12-16% descent with an 8-12% one. Your call.

Start in the tiny town of Coloma, famous for being the site of Sutter’s Mill, where gold was discovered in California. Almost the entire town is the Marshall Gold Discovery Historical Park, with a recreation of the lumber mill in which gold was found, a blacksmith shop with chatty blacksmith (note the Acme anvil, a nod to Roadrunner cartoons), several preserved 1850’s buildings, a visitor center, a museum, a old-timey theatre, and gold panning lessons. So you won’t be bored after your ride. There is ample parking at the Historical Park, but it costs $10 and there is plenty of free parking along both sides of the Main Street.

Beginning here has the advantage of ending here, but it also has the drawback of giving you almost no time to warm up before the killer climb, so I do the 10-mile Thompson Hill Rd. loop described in Adding Miles to get loose.

Ride northwest on Hwy 49 briefly, take Marshall Rd. to the R, and take the almost-immediate L onto Prospectors (no apostrophe) Rd. Prospectors is a very small road paralleling Marshall, often so close to it you’ll think the cars on Marshall are behind you, and it’s steep, 8-12% without a break for 2.3 miles. There is no reason for vehicles to be on it, so you should have it to yourself. The scenery is fairly stark—dry scrub—and the contour is fairly straight, so the rewards are mainly the isolation and the sense of accomplishment.

Prospectors runs back into Marshall. Go L for a brief, forgettable stretch and take Garden Valley Rd. to the R. You’ll pass an seductive turn-off for Mt. Murphy Road, but last I heard it was largely dirt. At the GVR intersection you’re yards from the village of Garden Valley, well worth a detour, with a nice plant nursery if you’re of a mind to do the rest of the ride with a potted plant in your jersey.

Garden Valley Rd. is delightful, pleasantly rolling without making you work through some very pretty foliage and light traffic.

GVR dead-ends at Hwy 193. Go R and suffer the steady traffic briefly until you reach Bayne Rd., which users of RidewithGPS insist on calling “Bane”—search for it that way if you want to see longer routes that incorporate it. Take it to the R.

Bayne Road is short, but it’s the stuff dreams are made on—tiny, isolated, pretty, and with an interesting contour. From east to west, it’s mostly down—at first gently, so it’s a roller-coaster through nice woods, then ferociously, 1.5 miles of nail-biting plummet that reaches 16% and is sometimes on the edge of a harrowing drop-off down to the South Fork of the American River. It’s bucket-list stuff if you have disc brakes—without them, the descent is so steep that stopping is almost impossible, and one dares not build up any head of steam. I was often doing 9 mph. Still, memorable.

One wonders what riding Bayne west to east is like. Most ridewithGPS routes go that way. It must be a pip of a climb.

At the bottom of the descent, Bayne runs along the river, and you can see some awesome swimming holes and rapids. There is no obvious way to get to the water from Bayne, but the map suggests that Serenity Lane on the north side or Johnson Ranch Road on the south might get you close.

Bayne bails out on Mt. Murphy Rd—go L, cross a historic bridge exactly as wide as an RV and no wider, and you’re back in Coloma. They have plans to replace the relic with a modern bridge without character, so do this ride soon.

Shortening the route: Since the sweetest parts of the route are Garden Valley Rd. and Bayne, you could ride both as an out-and-back, starting in either Coloma or Garden Valley, riding to the other, and returning. Of course in one direction you’re going to have to go up the Bayne wall.

Adding miles: As I said in the beginning, almost all of the roads around Coloma are too straight, big, and busy to be fun. But there is one short, very pretty little back road nearby, Thompson Hill Rd., and there’s a loop that incorporates it: from Coloma, take Lotus Rd > Thomson Hill Rd > Cold Springs Rd. Both Lotus and Cold Springs are large and busy, but the Cold Springs leg is almost entirely down, so it’s painless. Lotus, on the other hand, is a burden—a long, featureless big-road climb amidst noticeable traffic. It’s the price you pay.

At the intersection of Hwy 193 and Bayne on our route, you are just 3 miles down 193 from where 193 intersects our Mosquito Road loop, so it’s easy to do one ride that does them both as a rough figure-eight and turns two moderate rides into one big one.

Just east of our Hwy 193 leg lies a warren of small to very small roads, all worth riding: Shoo Fly Rd., Transverse Creek Rd., Bear Creek Rd., Spanish Flat Rd., Meadow Brook Rd., Balderston Rd., and the amazingly narrow Darling Ridge Rd. They’re all inter-connected—feel free to wander.

Distance: 26.5-mile lollipop
Elevation gain: 2800 ft

The area around Grass Valley and Nevada City is a warren of pleasant, quiet, unflat, thickly wooded back roads, none life-changing but all worth riding and all pretty much the same. Bestrides has four routes in the area: Dog Bar Rd., Red Dog/Pasquale, Willow Valley, and this one. None of the four has any striking vistas or unique geological features—just nice quiet riding through pretty country. Of the four, my favorite is Willow Valley, and I’d do it first, then any of the others.

One of my favorite kinds of road is one that is paralleled by a newer, bigger road that has the same starting and stopping points. The newer, bigger road has all the traffic, the commerce, and the noise, and you’re left with the old, skinny, meandering, isolated track . This route has 3 such back roads, so you get a lot of tranquil riding—except for the two short stretches of Hwy 174, you pass nothing but occasional houses and ranches, and few of those. It also has a lovely road contour in its opening miles: not too steep, sweetly meandering, easy ups and downs through really pretty woods. This ride is at its best in the first 30 minutes, so if you don’t love it then, go ride something else, because it isn’t going to get better.

There are no long hills and only a couple of little steep grades on this route, but you do exceed the 100 ft/mile elevation gain threshold for difficulty, so you’ll be going up and down, albeit moderately, all the time.

There is no particular reason to begin this route at any particular spot. I begin near Grass Valley, because that’s where I am most likely to be housed. Begin at the intersection of Rattlesnake and Lower Colfax Road, which you ride through on our Dog Bar Road ride. Parking is a bit scarce, in small dirt turn-outs. Ride SE on LCR, the first of our parallel back roads. It parallels Hwy 174, so all the traffic is on the highway and you should have the place to yourself. For the first miles, it’s a lovely meander up and down on a sidehill of a small canyon, among trees that are lush and pristine—enjoy them now, because I’m sure the State of California will soon go in there and clear out all the underbrush and 2/3 of the trees in the interest of forest fire suppression. You’re gently descending overall, which means that the return ride is a mellow climb.

After a while LCR gets larger, wider, and more built up with houses, but it’s still nice. It dead-ends at Hwy 174, in an area called Chicago Park apparently. I know because there’s a charming, iconic corner mercantile there called Chicago Park Store. You’re probably not ready for ice cream yet, but it will be a sweet oasis on the return ride. I think it’s the only re-supply spot on our route.

Turn R on 174 for the short descent to Bear Creek. 174 is busy and straight, but the scenery is actually quite pleasant (see accompanying photo), and anyway it’s short. You’ll see a prominent sign pointing towards Rollins Lake to your L and encouraging you to take the side road, but don’t—it’s Rollins Lake Road we want, and that’s not it.

After crossing the large, unmissable bridge across Bear Creek, we’re going to do our second parallel back road: Old Grass Valley Road, paralleling 174. Don’t take the unsigned turn-off immediately after the bridge—continue uphill for perhaps a quarter mile and take the next exit to the L. It’s clearly signed.

Old Grass Valley Road is a tiny ribbon of pavement through dense forest. It’s quite steep in places, and the pavement is imperfect, as you’d expect on a road no one should be using. In other words, it’s a blast. Don’t fret the steepness—the road you’re avoiding by doing OGVR, Hwy 174, has exactly the same elevation gain, and it’s a lot less fun.

Immediate- ly after OGVR debouches onto Hwy 174, 174 seems to T. Go L, following the signs to Rollins Lake. You’re now on Rollins Lake Road, the main artery, and for the third time we’re going to take a parallel back road. A short leg down RLR, take signed Norton Grade Road (spelled “Norton-Grade Rd.” in Google) to the R. NGR is ignored by most maps, and it’s weirdly sandwiched between Rollins Lake Road to its left and Hwy 80 to its right—they’re so close that you can often see first one road then another as you ride, and when you can’t see Hwy 80 you can sometimes hear it—but miraculously NGR has a great sense of isolation, with almost no traffic, almost no development, and in fact not much of anything except trees and a lot of vertical (as one would expect from any road named “Grade”). Once it starts up, it’s all up for 3 miles. It averages almost 7%, with occasional steeper pitches.

When NGR seems to T, go L for 150 ft and T again on Rollins Lake Road. Take RLR to the L.

Rollins Lake Road is in many ways the mirror image of NGR: it’s bigger, wider, straighter, smoother, and more manicured. The first few miles of the return are a dreamy, effortless descent, a constant 25-30 mph where you won’t push a pedal or touch your brakes. Once the descent is over, there’s a surprising amount of climbing back to Hwy 174, and, since the road is so domesticated, it isn’t much fun. By the way, despite the name, you get only one brief glimpse of the lake on either RLR or NGR.

There are at least two alternatives to riding the NGR/RLR loop as I’ve mapped it. If you prefer small/isolated/curvy/slow to the alternative, you can ride Norton Grade out and back and skip Rollins Lake Road entirely. Or, if you like small/curvy for climbing and larger/straighter for descending, do what the friend of Bestrides who suggested this route does, and ride the loop as a figure-eight: ride east (descending) on Rollins Lake Road to Glen Elder Road, which is a short connector between RLR and Norton Grade. Take Glen Elder to Norton Grade. Continue east (up) on NGR to the top of the loop, descend on RLR, cross over on Glen Elder, and return to 174 via Norton Grade. This way all the descending is on the bigger road and all the climbing on the smaller.

If you’re like me you’re expecting the return ride on 174 to be boring traffic hell. Not so. The ride back to the Bear Creek bridge is actually grand, a fast, glassy-smooth slalom descent where the traffic won’t bother you because you’re going as fast as or faster than they are. So I don’t recommend Old Grass Valley Road on the return, but it’s there if you abhor highway riding of any sort. Once over the bridge, 174 is…yeah, pretty much boring traffic hell, and all up to boot, all the way back to the Lower Colfax Road turn-off.

Back at the Chicago Park Store, eating your ice cream, you have a choice. The beginning of Lower Colfax Road is also the beginning of Mt. Olive Road, a lovely, precious little connector between 174 and Dog Bar Rd. It’s mostly dirt, but if you’re set up for it, and you prefer loops to out and backs, I encourage you to take Mt. Olive to Dog Bar and up Dog Bar and Rattlesnake back to your starting point. See our Dog Bar ride for details.

Assuming we’re sticking with our mapped route, the ride back up Lower Colfax is delightful. In fact, once you clear the houses and ranches in the first miles, I like LCR as much going up as I do going down. It’s never work, and the slower speed lets you take in your surroundings. The last miles are nearly flat and especially pretty, so you return to your car in the best of moods.

Shortening the route: Ride Lower Colfax Road as an out and back, or ride the LCR/Mt.Olive/Dog Bar/Rattlesnake loop.

Adding Miles: The simplest way to extend this ride is to add Dog Bar/Rattlesnake to the route—instead of returning on 174 north when you get off Rollins Lake Road, take 174 south and work your way through Colfax and over to the southern end of Dog Bar and ride it north.

A shorter extension is the Tokayana Loop, a sweet 7.1 loop just SW of Colfax (thanks, Doug). Ride Tokayana to Milk Ranch Road, which turns into Plumtree Rd., to its deadend at Placer Hills Rd., then go L on PHR, which turns into Tokayana. It’s all sweet riding. Milk Ranch plunges fairly steeply down to the pretty Bear River, which I’ve never heard of before, follows it for a while, then climbs back out. MRR is a deliciously tiny back road, but Bear River is developed for recreation (campground, parking lot) so Plumtree sees a surprising amount of traffic later in the day on warm weekends. Early mornings or weekdays are advised. If you’re adding Dog Bar to the Lower Colfax ride, you can add Milk Ranch Road effortlessly, since you’re riding right past it.

At the eastern-most point in our ride you’re 8.8 miles via pleasant riding from our Drum Power Station Road ride. See that ride’s Adding Miles for details and connector map.

The Grass Valley/Nevada City area is a warren of back roads, all worth riding. See our Dog Bar and Red Dog/Pasquale rides’ Adding Miles sections for names of good roads, or just wander.

Distance: 69 miles out and back
Elevation gain: 5018 ft

This ride goes through some of the prettiest scenery in the Sierra hill country.  It’s 31 miles of climbing, but I promise it’s doable, typically 1-4% and only momentarily over 5%. If that’s still daunting, it’s an easy route to edit—see Shortening the Ride below.

One caveat up front: I strongly recommend you do this ride in October, for two reasons: 1. the leaves of the maples and aspens are changing, which jacks up the gorgeousness level about ten-fold. In spring and summer the forest is just, well, green. In winter you’ll hit snow. 2. Hwy 49 can be busy, and, while the road isn’t narrow so passing is possible, I find the traffic (fast, aggressive) noisome. Downieville is a zoo in the summer, thanks to its excellent mountain biking, and Indian Valley is a string of popular campgrounds. October, almost no one is up there. In October, this ride is A-level; any other time, I don’t think I’d do it at all.

Our route begins with some nice fir/pine forest, does a very sweet 3-mile descent, follows the north fork of the great Yuba River for 10 miles, sees some good rock, climbs easily to the charming mountain community of Downieville, then does 12 miles of easy-to-moderate climbing to the equally charming but less touristy town of Sierra City. The road is consistently shoulderless but wide two-lane, roomy enough to allow safe passing, with a good road surface, and varying from fairly straight to fairly curvy. The riding is never exhilarating—even the descending is mellow—but it’s continuously charming and gorgeous (in October).

Despite its whopping elevation total, this route has something that’s very rare among Sierra mountain rides: flatness.  For 10 miles along the river (20 miles round-trip), there isn’t a single significant pitch.  For most of those 10 miles the climbing is imperceptible, and the occasional short rise is never worse than 2-3%.  If you keep finding mountain rides in Bestrides that sound delicious but have off-putting elevation gains, that ten-mile stretch is for you.

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Distance:  24-mile loop
Elevation gain: 3540 ft 

There is an endless amount of rideable road north of Placerville, but most of it is just-OK, generic green-wall riding.  This route has some real drama.  It’s a short, serious climbing route, the bulk of it on a small, energetic back road.  You plunge down to the bottom of the American River canyon, cross the river, climb steeply back out the other side, roll up and down along the side of the canyon, do a fast drop on a moderately traveled mountain highway back down to the same river, and end with a challenging 1000-ft climb.  Along the way you get some nice woods, some nice canyon vistas, and a lot of nice solitude.  It’s 3540 feet of gain in 24 miles of riding (which means 12 miles of climbing), so you’ll work.

There’s a possible issue with car traffic.  When I did the ride I saw no cars at all, but that was some years ago.  Now there is an active community at the intersection of Mosquito Rd. and Rock Creek Rd., with a population somewhere between 1000 and 2000 folks, and they have to get in and out, so you may meet some traffic on RCR.

Begin in downtown Placerville.  It’s a town well worth some checking-out time.  Don’t miss the hardware store, one of the oldest in the West and a bit of living history guaranteed to delight tool fetishists and non-fetishists alike.   Ride east out of town on the main street and when you’re almost out of town take the L turn under the highway onto Mosquito Road.  Climb steadily and moderately for 2.5 miles, until you’re at the lip of the South Fork American River Canyon.  From here to Hwy 193 there should be next to no traffic.  Plunge 4 miles down through thick, pretty Sierra Nevada foothill woods to the river.  The pitch is often too steep to be ideal descending, but it’s still exciting.  The last 100 yards are very steep and can be wet and treacherous.

Cross the river on a charming little bridge and begin the grinding climb up the other side.  It’s very steep for 1/2 a mile, then just steep for another 2 miles.  You’ll feel some pride when you get to the summit at mile 9.0.   At the intersection you encounter an  unexpected cluster of mountain estate homes.  This is the historic community of Mosquito (pop. 1000+), also known by the name of Mosquito’s most prominent housing development, Stansboro Country.  Google “Mosquito CA” for some interesting background.  Take the unmissable hard L onto Rock Creek Rd. and follow it as it rolls sweetly along the sidehill.  Enjoy the striking vistas of the river canyon.

When you deadend at highway 193 (Georgetown Rd.), go L and delight in the all-too-short but smooth, fast, sweeping descent back down into the canyon.  Cross the bridge and do a moderately challenging 2.5-mile climb back to town.   You’re on the shoulder here, the traffic will be noticeable, and the pitch is unvaried, but you’re in pretty, dense forest so the scenery is good.  On the outskirts of town you’ll merge with Hwy 49 (Coloma Rd.) but you won’t notice.

The route can be ridden in the other direction, but it will involve you in a 40-mph descent right off the bat, which I’d rather not do.

Adding Miles: The larger roads north of Placerville are merely good riding and all pretty much the same green-wall stuff.  But just a stone’s throw north of our intersection with Hwy 193 lies a warren of small to very small roads, all very isolated and worth riding: Shoo Fly Rd., Transverse Creek Rd., Bear Creek Rd., Spanish Flat Rd., Meadow Brook Rd., Balderston Rd., and the amazingly narrow Darling Ridge Rd. They’re all inter-connected—feel free to wander. Mt. Murphy Rd., bisecting our route, is largely dirt.

Georgetown is a cute little village with a nice old general store and hotel, and Garden Valley has a wonderful plant nursery.

If you’re looking for something mellow, ride the loop through Apple Hill (so-called because every fifty feet of road there’s an apple farm).  Begin at the intersection of Union Ridge Road and Carson Rd.  Go Hassler Rd > North Canyon Rd. > L on Larson > L on Cable > R on Mace, then R onto Carson and take Carson back to your car.  Carson is bigger, flatter, faster, and more trafficked than all those back roads, so stick to it if you’re really looking to avoid up and down.  This is not a ride to attempt during apple harvest, when the area is mobbed with tourists.

Where our route intersects Hwy 183 , you’re a mere 3 miles south on 183 from where our Prospectors Road to Bayne Road route turns onto Bayne.  So it’s easy to do both routes as a single ride, a rough figure eight, thus turning two moderate rides into one big one.