CURVESCOUTThursday Ride #9 · 7 January 2027
San Francisco · Skyline, Alice’s and Pacific Return
A loop from Skyline Boulevard ridge · United States
- 154 km
- 2 h 41 min riding
- 5 stops
- loop
This Thursday: San Francisco · Skyline, Alice’s and Pacific Return. 154 km as a loop from Skyline Boulevard ridge in United States, about 2 h 41 min in the saddle. A January ride for the south: it never climbs above about 150 m, well away from the high passes that close for the winter.
Keep this if you want a classic ridge road with a famous riders' stop. Skyline Boulevard, State Route 35, follows the crest of the Santa Cruz Mountains, and the 12 miles between Highway 92 and Highway 84 are the favourite stretch, with a turnout at Skeggs Point. At Sky Londa, 1,520 ft, there is fuel and Alice's Restaurant, where riders meet. Pass on the one-lane section further south, and turn off at Highway 9 instead. Keep it for a weekend morning, with a stop at Alice's.
- Mara, CurveScout scout
The map loads with the stops and the ride's road.
The ride, stop by stop
1Skyline Boulevard ridge
Skyline Boulevard runs along the spine of the Santa Cruz Mountains, high above the cities of the San Francisco Peninsula, and its ridge has a character quite unlike the coast or the bay. The road, also known as State Route 35, follows the crest through redwood and Douglas fir forest, with the fog of the Pacific on one side and the sunny, hazy bay on the other. Climbing from Belmont, about four kilometres away, you leave the suburbs behind within minutes and find yourself in cool, shaded woodland that smells of damp bark and bay laurel.
Beneath the ridge lies the San Andreas Fault, which runs through the long valley of the Crystal Springs reservoirs, the lakes that supply much of San Francisco's water. Nearby Sweeney Ridge is where in 1769 the Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portolá and his party looked down and saw San Francisco Bay for the first time, which they had missed on their march north. Redwoods in the folds of the hills include some of the oldest in the region, and many of the big trees were logged in the nineteenth century to rebuild the city.
2Alice’s Restaurant riderkm 30
Alice's has a second life as a rider stop, and it is worth saying a bit about the culture that has grown up around it rather than just the road. On weekends, the lot at the Skyline and Highway 84 crossing becomes a kind of open-air club, with riders from San Francisco, San Jose and the East Bay meeting for breakfast, comparing notes and drifting off in small groups. Nobody is in a hurry, and a sense of unspoken etiquette keeps things civil: park tidily, keep engines low when you leave, and wave at the locals.
The surrounding land is redwood and Douglas fir forest, in the heart of the Santa Cruz Mountains, with a thick, damp smell and a mossy hush. In the nineteenth century these hills were logged heavily to feed the growth of San Francisco, and the old skid roads and mill sites are still hidden in the trees. Many of today's roads follow those lumber routes, which explains why they bend and climb so naturally along the ridges. The San Andreas Fault runs through the valley just to the east, and the whole range is a product of the grinding collision of tectonic plates.
3Pescadero coast viewkm 73
On the coast south of Half Moon Bay, the Pacific shows a rougher, more private face than around San Francisco, and the viewpoints here are among the best on the entire Highway 1 run. The land is a narrow marine terrace of grassland and farm fields cut by steep gullies, with sea cliffs of crumbling sandstone and long, empty beaches below. Pescadero State Beach and Bean Hollow lie a few minutes away, with tide pools full of anemones and crabs, and sea stacks standing off the shore like a row of broken teeth.
A few kilometres south is Año Nuevo, where northern elephant seals gather on the beaches to breed and moult. The breeding season runs from December to March, when the big males fight and the pups are born, and the reserve needs a booked guided walk at that time of year. Even from the highway, the huge shapes of the seals can sometimes be made out on distant sand. Gray whales pass close to shore on their migrations in winter and spring, and a patient watcher at a headland may see a spout or a flick of a tail.
4Half Moon Baykm 128
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.
5Skyline Boulevard ridgekm 154
Skyline Boulevard runs along the spine of the Santa Cruz Mountains, high above the cities of the San Francisco Peninsula, and its ridge has a character quite unlike the coast or the bay. The road, also known as State Route 35, follows the crest through redwood and Douglas fir forest, with the fog of the Pacific on one side and the sunny, hazy bay on the other. Climbing from Belmont, about four kilometres away, you leave the suburbs behind within minutes and find yourself in cool, shaded woodland that smells of damp bark and bay laurel.
Beneath the ridge lies the San Andreas Fault, which runs through the long valley of the Crystal Springs reservoirs, the lakes that supply much of San Francisco's water. Nearby Sweeney Ridge is where in 1769 the Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portolá and his party looked down and saw San Francisco Bay for the first time, which they had missed on their march north. Redwoods in the folds of the hills include some of the oldest in the region, and many of the big trees were logged in the nineteenth century to rebuild the city.
Before you go
154 km loop, about 2 h 41 min of riding. Check the weather and any road closures before you leave; mountain and coast roads change with the season.