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

I love this road.  It’s loaded with character, and will charm you, I promise.

Mt. Veeder Rd. is a text-book two-hour ride: a straight ride up and over a summit, then return.   The landscape is varied and always pretty, and the road contour is ever-changing.  It’s a perfect ride, and the descent is my favorite descent in the Wine Country.  Once it was cursed with the usual Sonoma County lousy road surface.  About that I have good news, bad news, and good news.  The good news is that MVR has been recently repaved (Thanks, Joel) and it is now without a pothole or patch, so you can absolutely rip the descent.  The bad news is, it’s chipseal, so it’s a mite chattery. The other good news is, the repaving was done a while ago and car traffic has had time to wear down the worst of the jaggedness.  It’s not great, but it’s good.  The workload is between easy and hard—you’ll notice the climbing on both sides of the summit.

MVR is 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.  When last I rode it, Monday afternoon in March, it was at times almost busy.  As with every other rural road is California, MVR is suffering from an influx of mansions and vineyards.  Again, it’s not great but it’s good.

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.

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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.

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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.)

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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