King's Ridge

 

A couple months ago I threw out the idea on the social channels of a Thursday or some other day midweek ride. The major consensus was that Thursday was a good day for this, but I had one other friend who said Mondays worked better for her. I told her to let me know if she wanted to ride on Mondays. As a retail manager she had a hellish December, but wanted to catch up the miles on Mondays in January, hence Mile Mondays were born.

We've got some rides planned out (unfortunately I'm a jerk and am leaving for pretty much the whole month of January and ruined the idea, hopefully we can just get them together at a different time), but for a prologue Jillian suggested a Sonoma Coast ride, as she got her hands on a motor vehicle. Labeled as one of the most beautiful rides by the Santa Rosa cycling club, I couldn't resist.

7 AM pickup, two hours in the car, 40 degree unload in Jenner, mount, and we're off. We chose our own adventure starting in Jenner as opposed to Monte Rio (which would be the right decision after driving back up River Rd after, too much traffic on narrow shoulders). We rode out from the coast to start, battling a ferocious headwind before switching out to Austin Creek road, a scenic country road leading into Cazadero Highway then Cazadero itself. Once beyond this one horse two church town we hit the split, Fort Ross Road shot straight up to the left and Kings Ridge eased up on the right, we picked right and began.

Our only flats.

50 year old mossy bridges.

Moss surrounded the road up the climb.

After Cazadero we saw no more flats. At first they were gentle and we thought, maybe this won't be so bad? But we spoke too soon. The road dramatically shot up and narrowed down to a single lane enshrouded by moss covered trees. I was fortunate to have my touring gears, Jillian on the other hand, just beasted through on her race cross gearing (not even road gearing, badass).

Breaking at what we thought was the top.

Jillian's off.

We rode all the way back bare foot (okay, not really).

We fought hard up and up and up. We reached what we thought was the top, we rested in success. Of course it was preemptive, the road continued to sink and rise, endlessly rolling along the ridge. This narrow stretch of road held epic dropoffs and scenery around every bend, so we kept stopping to take pictures. Every time we told ourselves no more pictures another stunning view was there to greet us. It was absurd.

Such tough climbing.

Always hard to capture the grandeur of these trees in photos.

How we got there.

Detail

We crawled our way through on the hills taking photos only to find ourselves on a steep narrow descent down toward Seaview, only once again to shoot back up and down. This ride has no flats. By the time we hit the final Meyer's Grade descent we had had enough climbing and were excited to drop back into Jenner for one of my favorite off the beaten path cafes, Cafe Aquatic. No better way to cap off an epic day than an almond milk latte.