Mid Peninsula Epic

This ‘Mid Peninsula Epic’ took us on a grand tour of the Open Space Preserves lining the ridges of the Santa Cruz mountains on the San Francisco Peninsula.

Starting at Steven’s Canyon road we first climbed up Steven’s Canyon trail a bit, then crossed the creek to tackle the grueling climbing combo Table Mountain / Charcoal road. Charcoal is a nightmarishly steep mindnumbing fireroad climb – it appeared to be recently graded, meaning there was lots of loose stuff and sand to add to the misery. The good thing of it though, it does bring you up the ridge of the Santa Cruz mountains, and from there on all other climbing seems easy.

At last we hit the final section of the Saratoga Gap trail, which dumped us in Long Ridge Preserve. A few nice rollers and then the always fun descent along Peter’s trail, and we end up on the Bay Area Ridge trail, and in Skyline Ridge Preserve.

The mellow climb to the big chestnut tree is followed by a fun singletrack descent down to the Christmas tree farm. We make our way to Horseshoe Lake, and then it’s time for the nasty climb up to the Russian Ridge parking lot.

We wanted to peak bag both Borel Hill and the Black Mountain on this ride, so after a short break we did the short grunt up Borel. Ancient Oaks would be fun to throw in too, I thought, so that’s where we headed after having taken in the nice views. We climbed back to the ridge and crossed Skyline Blvd to Cloud’s Rest, where a fun section of trail in Coal Creek Preserve starts, one that would connect us to Alpine Road.

Some more climbing up Alpine and the final challenge of the day was awaiting us: the Black Mountain, in Monte Bello Preserve. We went up Bella Vista trail to the summit, and then down it – it’s a great descent, not technical, but ideal to practice some fast off-camber corners. We also went this way rather that going straight down Steven’s Canyon or Monte Bello road in order to throw in some extra fun, namely White Oaks trail, which is always a rather exhilarating experiene.

After a final painful climb we rolled back down to where we started, on Steven’s Canyon road. A +30 mile ride with +5000 feet of climbing through six or seven parks and preserves qualified for a genuine epic ride, we’d think!