Hicks Road

As you could see from my previous posts, I learned about a lot of those routes from books, e.g. Big Basin, Clayton, Mt. Diablo, Calaveras Rd....... Hicks Road is one of the few left that I always wanted to try but didn't get a chance to for some reason, until this labor day (I rode Big Basin with my buddy on the 2012 Labor Day weekend)  Maybe it's kinda down south and hard to gauge the time needed to finish the ride because of the climb. Also, I had no idea where to park in Los Gatos (It seems like there are plenty available in the residential area on the streets near Los Gatos Blvd.) The 2 Cat-5 and Cat-4 sections (Shannon and Kennedy, respectively) in and out of Los Gatos were actually quite good for warmup/cooloff. Of course, the biggest "attraction" was from the bottom of Hicks Rd to the summit (before getting up Mt. Umunhum. The Mt. Umunhum climb was one of the hardest in the area and was NOT part of my route) And both sides of Hicks Rd from the summit is kinda symmetric: one steep 1.5 mile stretch on each side so you could pick your own "poison" To me it's a pretty good challenge since I got too familiar with the routes in the peninsula already. The steep downhill is long enough to "re-train" my descending skill without scaring me too much. The shortened version could easily become a 2.5 hour routine weekend ride with my SJ friends.

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Road biking route suggestions

The previous post was for mountain biking. Now I'd like to mention a few good ones for road biking:

• Stanford cycling team's favorite routes listed a lot of the steep climb that I've done, like the famous Old La Honda, King's Mountain, Montebello and hidden gems like Moody, Joaquin, Golden Oak and Westridge. 
• The Egan Ride is a group ride that starts at the Egan Middle School in Los Altos. Their page listed many local routes from 15-30 miles with GPS/map. Very useful.
• Monta Vista Velo's page listed quite a few looooong rides (>50 miles) which includes Big Basin, Jefferson, Portola. All familiar names!
• Some routes in South San Jose Santa Teresa area. 

Mt Tam revisited

I rode up to Mt Tam and the Seven Sisters from Fairfax with a group of experienced riders before (just realized it's two years ago. I've learned a ton from them that time) and I kept bragging about it in front of my biking buddy. So the only right thing to do was to ride up with him too :) (BTW, I've also bragged about my Mt Hamilton and Mt Diablo rides before so eventually we would go all big 3) I found this route on MapMyRide and it seems more fun for an all-day ride than the morning ride I did before. Learned from last time, we parked in the narrow but long free public lot opposite to a garage (auto mechanics) on Sir Francis Drake road in Fairfax (the lot is on the intersection of Bolinas Rd between Sir Francis Drake and Center Blvd) The ride started from Bolinas Rd, through the neighborhood via some local streets to Olema Rd and back onto Sir Francis Drake towards North. Then we turned right into Nicasio Valley/Reservoir. Quiet and open country road there. Nice! Next, we turned West to Point Reyes Station, which I haven't visited for more than 10 years! Last time we came here for oyster. Actually the whole area has quite a few restaurants and we passed by many of them, e.g. Bovine Bakery, which was highly recommended by my co-worker but was closed that day. Instead of going South on Hwy 1 immediately, we took a detour northbound to Inverness. Again, nice ocean view! We turn back from there and passed Point Reyes National Reserve on Hwy 1, which was famous for bird-watching. I saw a black bird with a big red dot on each of its wings (probably a red-winged black bird.) Doesn't seem to be common everywhere! Finally we saw the ocean again (~40 miles into this route) and it was time to turn left and ride up Bolinas-Fairfax rd (small entrance, easy to miss!) It's a long 4-mile climb 'til we reached Ridgecrest, i.e., the famous Seven Sisters. Each sister represents a rolling section of the road (more than 7 of them!) The last "sister" was a hard 3 mile stretch before reaching the East peak. The original map didn't have this section so our planned 64 mile ride became 70! Nevertheless, we really needed to go up East peak because of the water fountain there to refill our emptied bottles. We still have 16 miles to go after the East peak by retracing the Seven Sisters in reverse and go down the other side of Bolinas-Fairfax rd. This part overlapped with what I rode 2 years ago but my memory was vague. I still remember the dam at Alpine Lake. That was a steep downhill with lots of sharp turns. Our arms were tired because of the descent but it was only ~2 mile long! Then we had 2 more Cat-5 climbs after the dam. Those are usually pieces of cake during our regular training rides but they felt like killers after riding 63 miles (including 1 Cat-1 climb!) We were completely exhausted after we made it back to the car. Nevertheless, we had a great time. This will be one of the rides that we talk about for years to come.

So here is the map of the route we did:

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Mt Diablo and Morgan Territory Metric century

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As I mentioned last time, I enjoyed riding the routes recommended by biking books. Two books I found invaluable are Foghorn Outdoors Bay Area Biking by Ann Marie Brown and Bay Area Bike Rides by Ray Hosler. I have done quite a few routes exactly following their directions, e.g., the Mount Hamilton ride, Big Basin, and Calaveras. When I have plenty of time (like today), I like trying long and faraway ones. This time I don't mind burning all my energy so I ended up doing not one but two routes from the books combined (I actually learned about the route from Strava when I looked for metric century, i.e., 100km, routes in the area. The other routes recommended by my friends is a 100km ride in Marin that includes Mt. Tam and the Seven Sisters, which seems equally interesting and I plan to do it next time) This is my longest ride since the Vienna-Melk ride. (More difficult climbs this time but I rode 75+ two days in a row then)

I always wanted to climb Mt Diablo since I've already done 2 out of the Big 3 Mt in the Bay Area (Mt Hamilton and Mt Tam) and I think it's the right time to go. The books recommended against going in Summer 'coz its lack of shades. I thought a cloudy Spring day would be ideal (which is WRONG and you'll see why later) The two routes I combined are: Mt Diablo Summit Ride, and Clayton (including Morgan Territory) The books suggested parking at or near Blackhawk Plaza Shopping Center and I followed. Started from there, I took Blackhawk Road, which passed a few gated communities (affluent neighborhood!) Then turned into Mt. Diablo Scenic Blvd at 3.5 mile mark (I wasn't too confident about getting my route right and stopped at the turn to read the map, which should not have been necessary. Of course it's supposed to be scenic!) From that point on you really can't go wrong since it goes all the way to the Summit at 3849 ft above sea level. MapMyRide actually broke down the climb into 2 sections. A cat 2 climb starting at the South Gate 'til the entrance kiosk. There's a short flat section to catch your breathe, then a 6-mile cat 1 climb all the way to the top. At the 10 mile mark there is a junction ranger station. This is where to return to after reaching the Summit. From junction to the Summit it's ~4.5 miles with the Juniper campground exactly in the middle between them, which was another good place to rest. I was not only a bit tired from climbing but more importantly very much bothered by the poor visibility due to dense fog and mist. Anyway, I made it to the top and as my friend told me already, the very last section before the Summit was steep (kinda like Golden Oak in Portola Valley, which I found manageable and less torturing than Joaquin)

You would think the trickiest part is done. Well, not quite, because the dense fog and mist was still there, if not worse, when I needed to go back down (also needed to negotiate the turns on the slightly slippery road and avoid getting hit by cars going downhill, which I could only hope the drivers were skillful enough to handle) I couldn't feel safe until I got back to the junction, where I regained visibility finally (that 4.7 mile descent felt like eternity!) From there it's a comfortable ride down North Gate Rd all the way to Walnut Creek. There is a round-about, be careful and ride onto Oak Knoll Rd. Then turn into Ygnacio Valley Road, where I watched the Stage 3 of Amgen Tour of California in 2012. BTW, the route today overlapped the route of that stage quite a bit (also this year's Stage 7) The cars are very fast on the busy Ygnacio but bikes should be safe on their own lane.

Finally it became less busy, especially after turning into Clayton Rd and the town of Clayton (seems like another upscale neighborhood) After leaving the shopping centers on Marsh Creek Rd, it became rural again. It took me longer than expected to arrive at the Morgan Territory Rd (at the 38.5 mile mark) and I checked the map a few times!

The first few miles of Morgan seemed too mild and that worried me coz' I knew it went up to 2000+ ft above sea level eventually so the later the climb start, the steeper it would be! Finally I started climbing at the 42 mile mark (where the road is buried deep in the woods and my friend warned me there's no phone reception) and the Summit (2087 ft) is at 48. I took some breaks in between and of course at the campground near the Summit, where I replenished my water bottles and sat for 5 minutes. Overall, Morgan wasn't that bad (I had similar if not worse experience with long climbs on the Sea Otter ride, Tunitas Creek and West Portal on the Peninsula.) It's just that I was tired from the prior climb and rides. And coming down the Summit felt safe even though it's steep (the riders will go the opposite direction than mine to Morgan's Summit on Stage 7) but it's paved well. The descent from 2000 to ~600 ft leads to Manning Rd (turn right) and then Highland Rd (another right), which are also part of Tour of California's route! And it's all flat and fast back to Blackhawk/Danville on Camino Tassajara, where you could see a bronze statue of a horse for an equestrian school. I think I'll feel more connected to the Tour of California this year!

Big Basin Bear Creek loop

I enjoy reading books on biking in the SF Bay Area and finding new routes to try. For the labor day weekend, I picked the 57 mile Big Basin loop found in one of the books because it's far enough from where I live to justify riding it on a holiday. It's also long enough but not too long to burn all my energy for partying afterwards! The ride started at the parking lot of a "hidden" small park (Wildwood Park) in Saratoga. It was empty at 8:30am. There was a long climb (~7 miles) immediately. We had no problem doing it since the legs were fresh. After reaching the familiar Skyline Blvd (most rides on the Peninsula end the climb on this road), we started descending into the beautiful Big Basin Redwood State Park. Obviously there were many huge Redwood trees. BBQ made by campers smelled great to us :( Once we turned from Big Basin Way (236) into Bear Creek, it was another long climb. Even though MapMyRide said it's Cat-2 (while the initial climb was Cat-1), we found this actually harder, maybe because our legs were no longer fresh. Finally it got easier when we reached the wineries (Byington, David Bruce) We were too happy and went the wrong way down 35 (Bear Creek Rd.) Fortunately we knew there were more climbs and realize our mistake early and turn back to get back on the other side of 35 (Skyline Blvd), which started very narrow, too narrow for 2-way car traffic! Another 7 mile we reached the submit at 3100 ft and from then on it's all downhill: back to the intersection of Big Basin Way and Skyline Blvd that we reached after the first climb and retraced that climb back to Saratoga. This route is definitely worthwhile to try because of the great scenery and also interesting climbs.