Road List: Uvas Canyon Rd • Mt Umunhum Loma Prieta Rd • Mount Umunhum Summit • Uvas Rd • Hecker Pass Rd • Pole Line Rd • Mount Madonna Rd • Hazel Dell Rd • Browns Valley Rd • Eureka Canyon Rd • Highland Way • Soquel San Jose Rd • Laurel Glen Rd • Branciforte Dr • Granite Creek Rd • Mount Herman Rd •  Felten Empire Rd •  Empire Grade • Jamison Creek Rd • Highway 236 • Highway 9 • Highway 35 • Alpine Rd • Pescadero Rd • Cloverdale Rd • Pigeon Point Lighthouse • Bean Hollow Rd • Stage Rd •  Tunitas Creek Rd • Lobitos Creek Rd • Purisma Creek Rd • Higgins Canyon Rd • Half Moon Bay • Higgins Canyon Rd • Purisma Creek Rd • Lobitos Creek Rd • Tunitas Creek Rd • Kings Mountain Rd • Highway 84 • Stage Rd • Bean Hollow Rd • Gazos Creek Rd • Cloverdale Rd • Pescadero Rd • Alpine Rd • Highway 35 Skyline Blvd • Black Rd • Bear Creek Rd • Highway 9 • Highway 236 • Big Basin Way • Jamison Creek Rd • Empire Grade • Smith Grade • Bonny Doon Rd • Swanton Rd • Half Moon Bay
 

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Designing a multi-day motorcycle tour often starts with a single idea: What if? I want to ride here. I want to ride there. How to create a cohesive route, gluing together a series of roads that'll last multiple days full of twisty goodness, while allowing the right timing and relaxed pacing for a memorable day on the motorcycle?

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What if we planned a weekend  ride in the Santa Cruz Mountain range and rode all of the roads – not one, not two – but (nearly) all of the twisty backroads in the Santa Cruz Mountain range in a single weekend. Is it possible to do that? How would that even work?

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After many hours, playing with mapping programs on several platforms, staring at a paper map- often days at a time....  That goes to that, connect this with that (Is that road even paved?). Then finally the ‘ah ha moment’ occurs…

 

Yeah. That'll work. Perfect!

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Mileage that works, good company, good eats, and lodging that overlooks the ocean all bound together with nonstop deserted twisty back roads all-day-long.

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Mount Umunhum...

 

The road to Mt Umunhum opened up to the public in 2017. An all-new twisty ride to the top of a mountain peak at 3489 ft. A decommissioned military base sits atop the peak. An 8-story tall concrete building known locally as The Cube can be seen from across the South Bay Area and remains on the summit while most buildings from the original Air Force base have been removed. However, this massive building was just the base for the largest rotating military radar ever built, active in the late 1950s. The massive radar dish was part of system of similar radar stations in California and among hundreds of others that compiled radar surveillance data into the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) defense system and then forwarded it onto NORAD. This network of radar sites was part of a vast system built across the West Coast of the United States from 1957 to 1980.
A small military base was built atop this peak overlooking the South Bay.

 

As many as 125 military personnel and their families lived atop the peak, however, advancements in technology, namely satellite technology, made this radar site obsolete. The radar site was decommissioned in 1980 along with many others along the West Coast but it took more than 35 years to return the peak to public use.

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Mount Hecker...

 

True confession: I made that up. There is no Mount Hecker. Hecker Pass does not cross a single named mountain, but it rides up and over the southern Santa Cruz Mountains between Gilroy and Watsonville. It's a main road, and busy with traffic. But here's the rub. Let's get off this road and ride the nearest-twistiest-narrowest single lane backroad we can find with the goal being that all the tour participants must say at least once: 'How did you find this road?'

 

Mount Madonna Rd is just that sort of ride. Single lane, covered in a canopy of thick Redwood forest, so thick, daytime resembles dusk and Clearwater Lights illuminate the road ahead. Just getting started.

 

Welcome to the Santa Cruz Mountain playground. This low range runs up & down the spine of the San Francisco Peninsula, the ocean on one side, Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay on the other. 

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While these mountains are not high in elevation in the classical sense of what a mountain is, the very fact that this range is a part of the Coastal Range that runs along 400 Miles of California coastline provides a delicious cadre of roads to explore in this portion of the range. None of these roads are very long in length, run down the hill, run back up the hill. Connect this with that, that with this and we've got an all-day twisty backroads route planned full of goat trails (a paved mountain road fit only for goats) and twisty fast slalom roads like Highway 35 & Highway 9 that run along the spine of the Santa Cruz Mountain Range. 

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In addition, many of these roads are backroads, narrowing at times to single lane paved mountain roads. No highways, no double yellows, backroads that were carved decades ago up mountain ravines along streams and creeks are the order of the day. Oh, and did we mention the redwood forest, yes, we've got that too. The western side of this range can get 50 inches of rain per year, in addition to providing a steady rhythm of fog to nourish and sustain numerous redwood groves that line many places on the western side of the range.

 

Running north-south on the spine of this range is Highway 35, better known as Skyline Drive, a self-explanatory title. The elevation along Highway 35 barely graces over 3000 feet, but this road is revered by local riders who often boast they know every corner and bump while claiming the fastest rider on the mountain is actually aboard a Kawasaki Ninja 250.

 

And they’re all hanging out at a biker joint known as Alice’s. Dating to the early 1900s as a general store supporting the local logging industry, this place has been a hub of local biker activity & exotic car culture for decades. Sometime in the 1950s, a restaurant was established and renamed in the 1960s for the proprietor, Alice Taylor. The same family has owned and operated the restaurant since the 1970s.

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Pigeon Point

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Below this biker hangout is the Pigeon Point Lighthouse, built in 1871, this lighthouse is straight out of a New England post card. The original lens comprised of 1008 hand-polished lenses and prisms weighs 2000 lbs. and was originally powered with refined lard oil, better known as pig fat. The pig fat was replaced in 1888 by a kerosene wick. Further innovation came in 1926 with the advent of electricity and a 1000-watt bulb. The lighthouse has been in need of repairs for many years and hopefully one day, the lighthouse tower will be restored much like the Point Arena Lighthouse was a few years back.  Pigeon Point is still one of the most picturesque lighthouses on the California Coastline, and you’ll be able to walk right up to the water’s edge.

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Our day together focuses on riding as many of these mountain roads as we can fit into the day, Kings Mountain, Tunitas Creek, Pescadero, Alpine, Stage, La Honda, Bean Hollow, Bear Creek, Jamison Creek, Empire Grade, Smith Grade are all local favorites. The roads that are the backyard to many Bay Area riders.

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With a stopover in Felton, we even get to explore a covered bridge known as the tallest covered bridge in the United States, this bridge was the only entry point into Felton from 1892 until 1937. Felton is on the southern tip of the Santa Cruz Mountain Range and serves as our southernmost point we’ll ride.

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