10 of us rode from San Francisco to Montara this weekend, stayed the night in the Montara Lighthouse youth hostel, then rode back. I’ll post a full map and photos later (edit: Ok, the SF->Montara ride has been posted) – to start, I’m just posting photos of Old San Pedro Mountain Road, our detour inland from Highway 1.
From Short Bike Rides San Francisco (where I read about this route) “San Pedro Mountain Road is the old alignment of Highway 1 before Devil’s Slide was built.” It’s now closed to cars and overgrown, a mix of pavement, broken pavement, dirt, and light mud (still doable without a mountain bike, though). Some people in the biking community call it “Planet of the Apes Road”– not that it’s *that* decrepit, but once you know it used to be a road for cars, you can imagine you’ve come across a collapsed civilization.
A description of its former life as a road for cars (100 years ago), from the Half Moon Bay Memories web site: “Numerous accidents occurred on this dangerous road and some of the wrecked cars can still be found in ravines below the route. “Even with a thoroughly reliable driver and trustworthy car,” Motoring magazine warned in 1913, “Pedro Mountain Road is in such poor condition that anyone going this way is simply inviting disaster.””
Despite the rough pavement and occasional sinkholes, it was an excellent ride– we passed through three or four different microclimates and had sweeping views of hills and the ocean (often with no civilization in sight except for high-voltage power lines marching across the hills). It’s not too hard a ride if you take it slow– everyone in our group (ranging from suspension mountain bikes to road bikes with 23mm tires) made it, without flats and with only a little walking in the rough sections.
We saw a few other cyclists, many of them hardcore mountain bikers in full helmets exploring the rougher side trails, which I heard are full of jumps, banked turns, water, heavy mud, and other excitement (below is a photo from Dave, who accidentally(?) ended up on one of those trails on the way back, and passed some huge mountain bike ramps and jumps).
The map:
