Distance: 67 miles out and back
Elevation gain: 5690 ft
(A Best of the Best ride)
(Note: Some of the recent forest fires hit this area hard. Damage to this actual route varies from non-existent to infrequent devastation. I didn’t find the pleasure of the ride significantly reduced. JR)
This is an out and back from a spot in the middle of a country road to the tiny town/store of Platina (pluh TIE nuh). So why is it called the Igo-Ono Ride? Because it goes through the tiny town of Ono, and the tiny town of Igo is one mile off the route, and it’s just tons of fun to say “Igo-Ono.” “Halfway down Gas Point Road to Platina” just doesn’t have that ring.
This is a perfect ride, with non-stop pleasant climbing and descending, grand vistas, next to no traffic, a classic country grocery store, several photogenic barns, and not one unrewarding mile. It lacks that big Selling Point—no redwoods, no waterfalls, no world-class descents—but the road contour is charming enough to earn Best of the Best status.
The road is unchanging wide two-lane without shoulder, but since there is almost no traffic (5 cars in 32 miles on my last outing) you have the road to yourself. The pavement is mostly good, with some poor miles, but nothing bad enough to interfere with your riding pleasure. There are no unending climbs or anything steeper than c. 7%, but there isn’t a flat mile, so the overall effort is substantial—note the elevation total above (5690 ft), which isn’t backbreaking but isn’t insignificant either..
The landscape is grassy rolling hills sprinkled with oaks and horse farms—nothing world-changing but very pretty in its way, especially if you can avoid summer when the grass is brown. My last outing was in February 2025, when a warm winter had the grasses lush and green and a recent cold precipitation had the hillsides covered in a light layer of snow—beautiful.
There is no water resupply on this route other than the Platina Store, and my sources say the Platina Store is now permanently closed, in which case you’ll be riding 67miles without resupply. On a hot day you might consider carrying a third water bottle and dropping one on the ride out.
Don’t try this ride on a summer day unless you start around 6 am. The Redding area regularly sees 100+ degrees in the summer, and this ride is largely without shade.
(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/37934123
The ride begins 12.5 miles down Gas Point Rd. from the “Gas Point Road” exit of Hwy 5 in Cottonwood, CA. Why there? You know my methods, Watson… The first 12.5 miles of Gas Point Rd. are dull. The scenery is barely OK (low-rent ranches) and the miles are flat, straight, pretty trafficky, lacking a shoulder, and not good enough for this list. The further down Gas Point you go, the less populated the area becomes and the more interesting the road contour. After 12.5 miles, Gas Point takes a sharp 90-degree turn to the right, paved Foster Rd. takes off at about 11 o’clock (there’s a sign), and Gas Point is excellent from then on, a swell, rollicking road that constantly reinvents itself. There isn’t much parking room at the trailhead, but 20 ft before you reach the intersection there are dirt turn-outs on either side of the road, each with room enough for a couple of cars. GPR has recently seen an influx of tacky houses with collections of junker cars for front yards, but everything else is charming.
After 7 miles of Gas Point, you enter a four-way intersection. The road names here are confusing, because the four roads all have different names. You find you’ve been riding, not on Gas Point Rd., but on Veterans’ Memorial Drive (you’ll have just passed the cemetery). On the other side of the intersection the road ahead of you becomes Placer Rd., and the crossing road is Platina Rd. to the L and Clear Creek Rd. to the R. Luckily this is all clearly signed. If you go straight onto Placer, in 1 mile you get to the tiny town of Igo. If you’re a literalist you’ll want to know you actually went to Igo on the Igo-Ono ride, and it’s a lovely mile anyway, so I encourage you to do it. There’s a nice country grocery store and deli there. But the official route goes L. Now you just follow Platina Rd. until it dead-ends at Hwy 36, then ride back.
Once on Platina Rd, the route offers a lovely variety. In four miles you’ll go through the tiny town of Ono, once home of the cheekily named Ono Store and International Café, now sadly consigned to history. The Ono town sign claims a population of 578, but you’ll wonder where they all are. Leaving the bright lights behind, you roll through pretty horse farms, then into wilder valleys, the rollers getting bigger as you work your way up into the foothills of the Coast Range. About 15 miles past Ono, something happens that is unique to this ride: you do a noticeable 1.7-mile ascent, burst out onto a little saddle and suddenly the road goes dead flat for the rest of the ride out (6 miles). You can see it unmistakably in the RWGPS elevation profile. The sense of sudden effortless riding after the work is joyous. The vista on your L opens up for the first time in the ride and you can see 70 miles across everything you’ve ridden, the Valley below, and Mt. Lassen and Mt. Broke-Off in the distance. Looking north or south along the Valley, you’re probably seeing close to 100 miles. The grand vistas continue until the turn-around. And because the terrain is quite hilly, to stay flat the road has to serpentine constantly. Tons of fun.
With a little bump at the end you reach Hwy 36. The town of Platina, which consists entirely of a tiny store, now closed, is a stone’s throw up 36 to your R. There is no particular reason to ride to town unless you want to say you saw it.

Looking back on the first 30 miles of the ride, with Mt. Lassen in the distance—click on photo to appreciate
The ride back is a different, and better, ride than the ride out, faster and more flowing, and the five or so extended climbs coming out are now invigorating descents. The return ride is not effortless—my computer recorded 1900 ft of climbing coming back—but you’ll only notice the work in about 3 places.
Shortening the ride: Start in Ono. Ride to the obvious top of the climbing; ride as much of the plateau as you like; return.
Adding miles: If you want to add just a few miles, at the four-way intersection continue north onto Placer Rd. Placer is divine for 3-4 miles—then it turns into big, straight, busy thoroughfare and continues on into the heart of downtown Redding, so I suggest you turn around.
If you don’t like out-and-backs or just want to see some new country, you can loop this ride. Turn L at Hwy 36, ride east on 36, and work your way back to your car. It’s a good ride, mostly downhill with a few large rollers on a bigger, straighter, shouldered highway remarkably free of traffic. It’s easier but quite a bit longer—about 90 miles.
If you want something epic, you can turn R at Hwy 36 and ride west. Hwy 36 has very little traffic for a highway, especially on weekdays, and you can theoretically ride all the way to the road’s end near Ferndale, if you’re touring. It’s winding and beautiful, but tiring and endless (OK, only 95 miles), and there’s no natural turn-around point.
Across Hwy 5 on the east side, starting around Anderson, is a warren of great roads, represented in our list by the Wildcat Road ride.
If you’re a mountain biker, the Redding area has developed into the one of the nation’s premier mtb trail systems. The three main areas are the Hornbeck Trail, the Swasey Trail system, and the Whiskeytown Lake trail system. In the first two, the tread is buttery smooth and perfect for novices. They suffered serious fire damage recently, but should still be worthwhile.
Doing this road some years ago – one way from Platina down – as part of a longer tour inspired me to invent a new metric for rating rides – the car to deer ratio. In this case, I saw considerably more deer than cars. It’s a lovely ride – and great description of it.
Thanks for all the work and love you have put into this site. For a redwood-loving, frightened-by-car beginner, it is a fantastic resource. Just wanted to note that the store at Ono was closed weekdays (and for sale @ $220k) when I visited a couple of weeks ago.
The Igo store was great with easy-to-access restroom and the Platina store was interesting.
This is a great ride! If you enjoy riding gravel, continue straight across Highway 36 at Platina onto Beegum Gorge Rd. and ride up to St Herman of Alaska Monastery and down the back side!!! It’s doable on 25-30mm tires.
I don’t know that area, but googlemaps implies you can keep riding past the monastery and eventually loop back around to Hwy 36.