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

Mt. Veeder Rd. is a text-book two-hour ride: a straight ride up and over a summit, down the back side, then return.   The landscape is varied and always pretty, and the road contour is ever-changing.  It’s a perfect, delightful ride, and the descent is my favorite descent in the Wine Country after Fort Ross Rd.  Once it was cursed with the usual Sonoma County lousy road surface.  But MVR was recently repaved (Thanks, Joel) and as of 2025 the one-obnoxious chipseal has worn down nicely, so it’s close to perfect.

MVR, like most of California, has been built up some since I started riding it, so it’s not quite the wilderness it once was, but it’s still lush and gorgeous.   It’s paralleled by a much more car-friendly road, Dry Creek Road (more on that later), that goes to the same place, so logically it should be car-free.  It isn’t.  Expect a couple of cars a mile.

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

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

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

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

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

Begin in Occidental.  See our Occidental Loop ride for details on the town itself.  Ride west on Coleman Valley Rd.  Instantly you’re into a short but steep (10%) climb that will kill your cold legs, so you might want to ride some flatter stuff to warm up.  There are four other roads heading out of Occidental, and they’re all good riding, but none of them is flat.  The nearest to flat is a very sweet little back road named (so it says on the sign) “Occidental CP MR RD,” which apparently stands for “Occidental Camp Meeker Road,” off Bohemian Highway just north of town on the R.

At the top of the climb, in a small saddle, there’s an intersection with two street signs telling you that Joy Rd. goes straight and Coleman Valley Rd. goes to the R.  If you’re looking to minimize your climbing, start your ride here (though parking is hard to find—there’s a tiny dirt pull-out a stone’s throw down CVR).

The road climbs and drops through lovely, thick coastal forest into a charming, unpolished farming valley, the eponymous Coleman Valley.  Note the old one-room schoolhouse preserved on your R.  There is often a flock of wild turkeys in the area around the school.

At the far end of the valley you climb, significantly, for a mile to a series of rollers through classic coastal headland.   You’ll swear you’re in the Scottish highlands.  Fog is common here on warm days, but it only adds to the Gaelic atmosphere, and almost always Hwy 1 is below the fog layer so you should get good views of the ocean and the coast.  This is open range, so you’ll see cattle and sheep, sometimes on the road.  The road is constantly and seriously up and down (in either direction), so you’ll burn more energy than you expect.

1.5 miles from the end, the road drops straight down to Hwy 1 and the ocean.  The descent is a little too steep, too rough, and too tightly curved to be a lot of fun.  There’s a bone-rattling cattle guard right in the middle of the descent, just where you don’t want it, at a spot where you’re tempted to get up some serious speed.  There appears to be a second one, but it’s actually fake—just white lines painted on the road.

At the CVR/Hwy 1 junction, go straight across the highway onto the unmissable little path that is Coleman Beach State Park (unsigned).  You’re on top of typical coastal headland bluffs, and I saw no way down to the water, but the  views are good in both directions.  It’s a perfect place to have a little picnic and watch the waves crash on the rocks below.  There’s a small interesting coastal community, Carmet, 1/2 mile north on Hwy 1 if you want civilization.

Climb back up the Wall.  At the top, the climbing is by no means over—the route home has less climbing than the route out, but not by much.

When you get to the Joy/CVR intersection, you have a choice.  You can go L and return to Occidental by way of the short, steep drop you rode up at the start of the ride.  Nothing wrong with that.  But our route goes R, onto Joy Rd. for a very sweet 1.3-mile descent.  Take the first real L onto Bittner Rd. (it’s at the bottom of a steep saddle, so you’ll probably be doing about 35 mph when you reach it).  Bittner would be a bucket-list descent if the road surface were pristine, which it isn’t.   It’s still fun, and very pretty.

This ride is not car-less.  Coleman Valley Road is anything but built up, but people do live there, and there’s Carmet at the end of it, so you will see traffic—perhaps 2 cars per mile.

Shortening the route: If you’re just out for an easy day, start after the Joy/CVR intersection, ride to the drop-off to Hwy 1, enjoy the vista, turn around and ride home.

Adding miles:  Also leaving from Occidental, Graton Rd. is the first leg of our Occidental Loop ride.  The Bohemian Highway is the first leg in our Bohemian Highway Loop.  Both of these rides have very good or mostly very good road surfaces.  Ride Bohemian to its northern end in Monte Rio and you’re a stone’s throw from our King’s Ridge Road ride and our Sweetwater Springs ride.  Two readers (below) trumpet the merits of riding Bohemian, riding to Hwy 1, riding south to Colman Valley Rd., and riding east on CVR back to Occidental.  Bohemian to the southeast takes you to Freestone, home of the locally famous Wild Flour Bakery, and the north end of all the fine riding in the Marin hills, represented in our list by the Chileno Valley Road/Tomales Bay Loop.   You can turn our route into a loop by turning north up Hwy 1 when you reach the ocean and turning R on Willow Creek Rd., a very back-country back road with a long stretch of dirt in the middle I’ve been assured is rideable (Levi’s Gran Fondo has a route that includes it).  You may want 28 mm tires for that one.

Fans of bike paths will want to know there is a flat, straight bike path from Santa Rosa to Sebastopol, the Joe Rodota Path, that parallels the highway (not too thrilling except as time trial training), and its continuation, the West County Regional Trail, from Sebastopol north to Forestville (somewhat less boring).

Distance: 49-mile lollipop
Elevation gain: 3920 ft

(A Best of the Best ride)

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

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

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

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

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

Water is an issue on this ride, as it’s all in relatively unpeopled areas after Cazadero.  There is a water bib just after the climb out of the Hauser Bridge canyon, provided for you by the thoughtful monks of the Ratna Ling Retreat Center—watch for it in a dirt turn-out on your R, just before the unmissable main gate.  Still, you might want to dig out your camelbak for this one.

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

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

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Distance: 10 miles one way
Elevation gain: 1160 ft

This is a challenging climb and ripping, curvy descent through surprisingly dense, pretty woods.  It would be deserted were it not for the other cyclists, of which there can be many.  One weekend day I met about 200 bikes climbing the back side as I descended.  On a weekday, you’ll see no one.  The road surface is a little rough in places, but I don’t think you’ll mind.  I’ve called the ride a one-way.  People ride it in either direction, so it’s possible to do it as an out-and-back, but it would give you two tough climbs, and most riders make a loop (which I will describe in Adding Miles) along roads that aren’t good enough to make our list but are good nonetheless.  I always ride it the way I’ve described it, east to west.  If you ride it the other way, the climb is less steep and longer.

Warning: periodically my electronic mapping services show a gap in the middle of this road—not a stretch of dirt, just nothing.  Trust me, the pavement is continuous.

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

https://ridewithgps.com/routes/37954106

Start at the intersection of Sweetwater Springs Rd. and Westside Rd.  There’s a small but nice turn-out for parking 20 yards up Sweetwater Springs Rd.  Ride Sweetwater Springs Rd. to its dead end on Armstrong Woods Rd.  You’ll start with some rolling climbs, then a surprisingly long descent, then ride along a little creek through a lovely, shady, thickly-wooded riparian area, then start some serious climbing.

When you enter the riparian area, the road surface deteriorates for a while, and then the climbing gets positively fierce, like 18%, 4-mph fierce.   Luckily when the pitch is at its worst, the road surface is glass.  The really hard stuff doesn’t last more than a mile or so.  Watch for a paved driveway on your left which marks the end of the steepest work.  The climb continues, but at an 8-10% grade that feels positively easy by comparison.

Past the obvious summit it’s all very fast, very curvy downhill—watch for road imperfections and bicycle traffic coming at you.

 Adding miles: If you don’t want to ride back up the hill, you can loop back to your car with negligible climbing by riding back along the Russian River.   The scenery is great, and you get to experience Guerneville, a wonderfully charming below-the-radar village.   From the end of Sweetwater Springs Rd. go L onto Armstrong Woods Rd. into Guerneville.  Turn R on Main St., ride to the Safeway parking lot on your L, and eat at the taco truck in the parking lot.  Ride back up Main St. the way you came and keep going east along the Russan River on what is now called River Rd.  This leg is narrow with a minimal shoulder, and it’s always busy with traffic, so it’s not a stretch of road I enjoy by any means, even though the ambiance (river, lush woods, old-California ramshackle vacation cabins) is adorable.  Watch for Westside Rd. angling off on your L and take it—it’s all fine riding from there to your car.

At the end of our route, Armstrong Woods Road to the R is reputed to be short, steep, and rewarding.

Four miles north up Westside Rd. is Mill Creek Rd., which is described in the Adding Miles section of the Pine Flat ride.  Westside Rd. itself is a popular mellow bike route, but its northern end is lined with wineries, so it’s busy with cars.

There is great riding north and south of River Rd.  To the south, the Bohemian Highway is beautiful all the way to Freestone, although it’s a bit of a car thoroughfare.   To the south and east of Freestone everything is good, especially Barnet Valley Rd.  In the middle of the Bohemian Hwy lies the town of Occidental, a nice spot with a few surprisingly good restaurants, and the beginning of the Coleman Valley Road ride.  Mays Canyon Rd. is a particular treat—a gorgeous, centerline-less, patchy, winding path through back country so heavily wooded you almost need a machete.  On the north side, a few miles toward the ocean from Guerneville, is the King’s Ridge ride.   See the Adding Miles sections of the Coleman Valley and King’s Ridge rides for more possibilities.

Afterthoughts: It’s shady in there, so this ride can be drippy.  It’s not a problem until you hit the 18% stuff.  I did it once when the road had a thin film of water on it, and traction was…interesting.  On a dewy morning you might like to wait until later in the day or start the loop from Guerneville.

Distance: 24 miles out and back
Elevation gain: 3060 ft

(Note 11/12: Pine Flat Road, along with Chalk Hill Road, was a victim of the Kincaide Fire.  Nibbles (below) says they’re both still grand.)

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

This ride is a climb.  Just one big, hard, magnificent climb up a 1-1/2-lane road without a center line (my favorite road size).  I learned about it when someone told me it was a favorite training ride of Levi Leipheimer.  But it’s more than just a training ride.  It’s very pretty in a dry, barren sort of way, with grand, expansive views, it has a lot of variety to the road contour, and it dead-ends at the summit, so it has no through-traffic.  Except for a few scraggly houses, it’s just you, the road, and the scenery.

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