Big Sur Pacific Coast Day
A 260 km loop
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Why this ride
A proper escape from San Francisco Bay Area with roads worth waking up for. Out of Richmond and back again: 260 km, roughly 4 h 43 in the saddle. On the way it passes Scenic stretch near Orinda, near Half Moon Bay and South San Francisco. The climb of the day is in Ashland. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Roadbook
- Fuel stop in Richmond
fuel
Fuel at 0 km.
- Scenic stretch near Orinda
scenic
Scenic stretch near Orinda comes up 35 km in.
- High point in Ashland
pass
This is where the road stops climbing.
- Photo stop near Half Moon Bay
photo
Half Moon Bay is where the Peninsula's mountains finally meet the Pacific. The town sits on a wide coastal plain, backed by the green flank of the Santa Cruz Mountains and fronted by a long crescent of sand, and it feels like a different state from the busy bay side only twenty minutes away over Highway 92. Fog arrives most summer afternoons, so mornings are your best bet for sun.
Riders come through on Highway 1 and use the town as a pause on the coast run. The road here is wide and easy, with long views over fields of artichokes, Brussels sprouts and pumpkins, and it grows tighter and more dramatic south toward Pescadero and Santa Cruz. Highway 92 over the mountains is the classic way in from the east, a tight, tree-lined climb with a few steep switchbacks, and it is worth a ride in either direction. Watch for cyclists, who flock to these roads at weekends, and for the cold, wet patches under the redwoods that never quite dry out.
Half Moon Bay is also a place with some history. It began as a Spanish-era farming spot, and later became known as Spanishtown, and during Prohibition its isolated beaches were used by rum-runners who landed their cargo at night. Today, its biggest annual event is the Art and Pumpkin Festival in October, when the whole coast road clogs with visitors. A few kilometres north, at Pillar Point, huge winter swells break far offshore at a place surfers call Mavericks, and in big storms they are a spectacle even from the cliff.
For practical things, the town has more than twelve thousand people, which means fuel, groceries, bike shops and cafes on the main street are all easy. A bowl of clam chowder and a view of the harbour at Pillar Point is a classic and reliable lunch. Weekend traffic on the coast road can be slow, with long tailbacks heading back over Highway 92 on Sunday afternoons, so plan around it.
- South San Francisco
finish
High on the side of San Bruno Mountain, giant white letters spell out "South San Francisco The Industrial City", a hillside sign put up in the 1920s and still the first thing most people notice when they arrive. It tells you the town's story: this was a place of meatpacking, steel, shipyards and factories, the working neighbour to the grand city to the north, and it has kept that practical, unpretentious feel even as its industries have changed.
The biggest change came in 1976, when a young company called Genentech set up here, and South San Francisco became known as the birthplace of the biotech industry. Today its eastern shoreline, along the bay, is packed with labs and research campuses, and the town is one of the world's great centres of biological research. San Francisco International Airport lies just to the south, and planes roar low over the bay all day.
San Bruno Mountain, rising above the town, is a surprising island of wild land in the middle of the urban peninsula. It is a state and county park, with grasslands, coastal scrub and rare species, including the tiny mission blue butterfly, and its trails offer views over the bay, the city and the ocean. When the summer fog rolls in from the Pacific, it pours over the ridge like a waterfall, and the temperature drops by ten degrees in minutes.
As the finish of a Big Sur ride, it marks the end of one of the great coastal rides of the world. Highway 1 from Big Sur runs north past Monterey, Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay, along cliffs and beaches, and the last stretch through Pacifica uses the Devil's Slide tunnels, opened in 2013 to replace an old road that kept falling into the sea. From there, you cross over the hills into South San Francisco. Traffic builds as you get closer to the city, and the fog can make the coast cold and damp, even in summer.
Fuel, food and services are easy to find, and there are good Filipino, Mexican and Chinese restaurants in the town. Pull over somewhere you can see the sign on the hill, and enjoy the fact that you have ridden one of the world's great roads.
- Montara
food
For years, the stretch of Highway 1 just north of Montara was the road everyone worried about. Devil's Slide, a crumbling headland of rock above the Pacific, kept sliding into the sea and closing the highway, sometimes for months. Since 2013 the traffic has passed through a pair of tunnels bored through San Pedro Mountain, and the old road along the cliff has become a walking and cycling trail with some of the wildest views on the San Mateo coast. If you have twenty minutes, walk a piece of it.
Montara itself is a small, quiet coastal community at the foot of Montara Mountain, with wooden houses scattered up the slope and a wide, sandy state beach below the highway. The Point Montara lighthouse, a slender white tower, stands on the bluffs just south of town. A little further on, at Moss Beach, the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve protects rocky reefs and tide pools where, at low tide, you can see anemones, crabs and starfish, and sometimes harbour seals hauled out on the rocks.
The ride along this part of Highway 1 is classic Northern California coast. The road winds along the cliffs and through small towns, with the Pacific on one side and green hills on the other. In summer, fog often hangs over the coast in the morning, burning off by midday, and the temperature can be ten degrees lower than in the Bay Area just over the hills. The road is busy on weekends with cars and cyclists, and the surface varies from smooth to bumpy. Watch out for sudden stops near the beaches and viewpoints.
Montara is too small to have much in the way of services, but El Granada and Half Moon Bay, a few miles south, have fuel, restaurants and cafés, and Pillar Point Harbor is the place for fish and chips by the boats. The beach here is beautiful but the water is cold, the surf can be powerful and rip currents are common, so swim only if you know what you are doing. Sitting on the sand with a coffee, watching the surfers and pelicans, is a safer pleasure.
- Near Lagunitas-Forest Knolls, on the way back
swim
The San Geronimo Valley runs west from Fairfax towards the coast, a narrow green valley of meadows, oaks and redwood groves, with small communities like Woodacre, Forest Knolls and Lagunitas strung along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. It feels much further from San Francisco than it really is, and in the evening, when the fog creeps in from the ocean and the light goes soft and silver, it is magical.
Just west of Lagunitas, Samuel P. Taylor State Park protects a forest of coast redwoods along Lagunitas Creek, with tall, straight trunks rising into the mist and ferns covering the ground. The creek is one of the most important spawning streams in California for endangered coho salmon, and in winter, after heavy rains, you can sometimes see the fish fighting their way upstream. The park also has a history: Samuel Taylor built a paper mill here in the 1850s, the first on the Pacific coast, and later a resort.
On the question of swimming, the honest answer is that the creek is too precious and the reservoirs in the hills are off limits for swimming. The better place is a short ride west, at Tomales Bay, a long narrow inlet along the San Andreas Fault. At Tomales Bay State Park, near Inverness, small beaches like Heart's Desire face calm, shallow water that warms up in summer, sheltered from the ocean waves. The water is cool but pleasant on a hot day.
The riding here is a joy. Sir Francis Drake Boulevard twists through the valley and the redwoods with good curves and a decent surface, although it is narrow in places and busy with cyclists on weekends. Beyond, the roads to Point Reyes, with its lighthouse, cliffs and elk herds, and the coast road along Tomales Bay are among the best in the Bay Area. Watch for deer, especially at dusk, and for fog that can make the road slick.
Fairfax, about seventeen kilometres east, is the nearest town of any size, with fuel, cafés and a laid-back vibe; it is known as one of the birthplaces of the mountain bike. Lagunitas gave its name to a well-known craft brewery that started here in the 1990s before moving to Petaluma. Stop in the redwoods, breathe in the damp air and enjoy the silence.
- Back to Big
finish
Richmond is the East Bay city that built ships for a war. Between 1941 and 1945 the Kaiser shipyards on the waterfront produced 747 vessels, more than anywhere else in the country, and tens of thousands of workers arrived from across the United States, many of them women and many of them Black, to fill jobs in the yards. The Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park, at the old Ford assembly plant and along the shoreline, tells that story with museum displays and restored buildings, and it is a surprisingly affecting place to spend an hour.
Today Richmond looks different. The big Chevron refinery sits on the shore north-west of town, with towers and flare stacks that dominate the horizon, and the city has a rough reputation, though the waterfront has been transformed. The Marina Bay shoreline has trails, parks and views across the bay to San Francisco, and the old town of Point Richmond, a pocket of brick buildings and small restaurants, has a village feel. At the end of the point, the old tunnel leads out to a beach and a view of the Golden Gate and Mount Tamalpais.
The label here says Big, which could stand for Big Sur, but the real sense of the place is as a launch point for the Marin Headlands and Point Reyes side of the bay. The Richmond-San Rafael Bridge crosses from here to Marin County, a long double-decked span with views of islands, ships and the Marin hills. It is windy and exposed, and in strong gusts the lanes are narrow, so hold your line and take it easy. Beyond it the road joins Highway 101 and the quiet back roads of Marin.
Richmond has about 110,000 people, so fuel, food and repair shops are easy to find along the main roads. On the bike, the best time to cross the bridge is mid-morning, outside the commute, and spring brings green hills and clear air. In summer the fog arrives in the afternoon, so carry a jacket and be ready for a sharp drop in temperature when you reach the coast.