The main map of the website gets a new blue marker today. This new road ride is the first one on the site that takes place in Sonoma County. (The Marshall - Chileno Valley Loop ride also starts within Sonoma County, technically, but the vast majority of its mileage traverses Marin County.) There's clearly plenty of good road riding to be done in the wine country, but none of it was represented on this website until now. This new ride certainly isn't nearly enough to eliminate that shortcoming, but it's a step in the right direction. There is more wine country ride information to come.

Those who follow this page with any amount of regularity might remember what I wrote late last year about EveryTrail.com becoming increasingly flaky and inoperable, which is where I set up the geotagged photo maps to which I link from the thumbnail pages of my photo sets. A couple of months after that, the feature for adding new ride data to EveryTrail had pretty much stopped working altogether. Most of this year's new rides and updates on the site, therefore, lacked a geotagged photo map link.

I noticed a few weeks ago that the new ride creation feature of EveryTrail has started showing some signs of life again. I used that opportunity to create the missing geotagged photo maps of all the recent rides that were missing it. These are:

• Sierra Vista (Suggestion 2)
• Hole-in-the-Ground Loop
• Mount Hamilton
• DeLaveaga Park
• Crockett Hills
• Mount Tam (Deer Park Road and Coast View Trail)
• Morgan Territory and Vasco Road Loop
• Sanborn County Park
• Jackson Demonstration Forest (Double Loop)

I should make it clear that this does not mean EveryTrail.com has become perfectly usable again. It's still very much hit or miss. But, at least it's an indication that you might see my geotagged photo map links work once in a while. In other words, my need for a more reliable solution for geotagged photo maps is unchanged. I haven't been able to work on that in months. Incidentally, if any of you know of a handy option that you feel I may not be aware of, do let me know.

One trail network within driving distance of the Bay Area that I've been itching to try over the last couple of years is the Mendocino Coast. I've heard nothing but praise for the trails in and around Jackson Demonstration Forest. I can paraphrase most descriptions I read of these trails as "miles and miles of great, bike-legal, forest singletrack that you can have all to yourself". I finally got to try out a ride there a couple of weeks ago. What I saw jibes well with the things I've been hearing.

The main reason you're likely to have these trails all to yourself when riding here must be the distance of this location from major population centers. However, I think that a couple of additional reasons for this may be the general low availability of information about these trails and the fact that navigating them is not easy. I hope that the Jackson Forest ride I've now posted in the Out-of-Area Rides section of this website may work toward mitigating those latter factors a little bit.

This one can be considered a minor update. I've replaced the photo set of this ride, which is my favorite one at Wilder, with a brand new set of images. The ride's stats, description, and route are completely unchanged. On the other hand, this update should still qualify as a significant improvement to the information on this ride, because the original photo set for this ride was cobbled together from different rides done in different seasons ranging from 2007 to 2012. These new photos all come from the same ride, which is a recent one. It also doesn't hurt that these new images were shot when all the vegetation was still green.

Here's something all of us can do to help advance mountain biking in California: I've learned about an online vote that Bell Helmets is holding to decide which of three trail building projects will receive its $100,000 grant. One of these projects is a gravity run in the Exchequer Mountain Bike Park in Mariposa, California. While this location may not be within the immediate biking range of most Bay Area riders, it will interest many who can afford the time for weekend biking trips. Moreover, it's bound to bring fringe benefits to all of us in terms of being another step toward making Northern California a prime mountain biking area.

Voting ends on June 4th. My vote is already cast...

The content of this ride originally dated from the earliest history of this website and was a little slim. At the very least, it deserved more than the couple of photos originally available to represent its sweet and scenic singletrack descent on Coast View Trail. Though this ride is not a big or ambitious one, this trail still makes it one of the best ones that Mount Tam has to offer (even leaving aside for a moment the rarity of good bike-legal singletrack in Marin in the first place). With the main aim of adding a full photo set, I've repeated the ride not too long ago and the ride's content is now more well-rounded.

The new full photo set still doesn't include some of the best views to be seen from Coast View Trail because of partially foggy conditions at the time of my ride, and it also lacks any images to represent Muir Beach Overlook (which is ordinarily one of the highlights of this ride, in my opinion) because it was closed on that day. A few unexpected details are also revised now. One odd change is that, while the entire trail making up the descending part of this trail used to be called "Coastal Trail" in earlier years, the singletrack stretch of this trail now appears to be referred to as "Coast View Trail" on trail signs and on the park's online map(s). This meant a tweak not just to the ride's text but even to its title. The path followed to Muir Beach is also slightly different from that on the earlier route plot of the ride due to the slight repositioning since then of the parking lot there and its path to the beach. Finally, those who are really paying close attention may like to know that the ride's stats are all tweaked down marginally, which is mainly because of a part of the old route meandering through some of the streets in Muir Beach that I've left out on my latest ride.

It's not at all common for me to post a new ride on this site the very next day after doing the ride. It has happened maybe once or twice until now, and only when I felt that the content is urgent in its usefulness to all of us. Well, it has happened again today and it's for the same reason. Easily one of the most interesting things that have been going on in Bay Area mountain biking in recent weeks is the sudden, exponential growth in the popularity of Crockett Hills Regional Park. This month, I've received two unrelated messages from this site's viewers within the space of a single week, both suggesting that I post a Crocket Hills ride, which is unprecedented. There is a very good reason for this: the recent construction of three (yes, three!) flow trails built specifically for mountain biking. These additions, along with a couple of older singletrack trail segments in the park, make it possible to do a 13-mile ride here with nearly 80% singletrack mileage, like the one I've just posted. Let's tell all our friends, let's all enjoy these great new trails, and let's all behave responsibly and nicely while we do that and there will be much more of this to come.

The new ride I'm adding to the site today is easily one of the most iconic road rides of our area. It wasn't overnight that I worked up the will power for this mountain climb and to convince myself that I'm in good enough shape to try it. In the end, however, I was pleasantly surprised. The climb on the ride is actually of a very manageable kind; it's just that there is a lot of it. You don't need race-winning cycling chops in order to make it to the peak. Those who can just keep pedaling all day at a slow burn can easily pull it off. The grade is possibly the most reasonable of any that you would find on a major mountain climb. The ride does rank among those with the highest total elevation gains on the site right now. So, it's nothing to sneeze at. But it's easily manageable by mere mortals who happen to be having a good season, and it's a very easy recommendation to make to all such riders.

Good things have been continuing to happen at Sierra Vista Open Space during the couple of years since Sierra Vista Trail was added to the very short roster of bike-legal singletrack trails east of Santa Clara Valley. These include Sierra Vista nicely aging into a little more seasoned hillside singletrack (rather than remaining a just-graded multi-use path), the creation of a nice little additional singletrack loop in the form of Aquila Loop Trail, and the opening of a new trailhead and parking lot on Sierra Road allowing much easier access to Sierra Vista Trail. Late last year, I did another ride at Sierra Vista to try out the different kind of Sierra Vista ride that these changes now allow; that is, different from the toughness of having to access Sierra Vista Trail from Alum Rock Park as reflected in the original Sierra Vista ride posted here. That new ride is now available as a second Sierra Vista ride suggestion. It should be a welcome addition for those riders who'd like to ride this nice and very scenic singletrack but can't stomach too many tough climbs.

Here's one of the new, "longer" road rides I mentioned below that I've been doing this season. While not truly longer than the average road ride already listed on this site, the total climb of this route currently ranks as the second highest among the road rides represented here, so it's a "bigger" road ride than most that are available here. The amount of climbing on this ride is not a surprise, of course, given the fact that it tackles probably the most imposing mountain in our area. The ride is an easy recommendation to anyone who does road rides and can handle the amount of climbing involved. The excellent scenery that evolves as you make your way higher works as a wonderful distraction during the long climb as well as serving as a great reward for your effort.

The atypically high amount of rains we've been getting lately have prompted me to do more road rides than I usually do in the fall season (in addition to being a welcome break after last year's scary drought). I've also found myself trying out longer road rides this year than I had up to this point. The new ride I'm posting on the site today is one such example and is only one among a short backlog of similar new rides that I'm currently sitting on.

This long loop through the deep, hilly backcountry of the Santa Cruz Mountains has sat on my to-do list for quite a while. For most of that time, it was waiting for me to find the right opportunity, but even more importantly, to muster the will power to attempt the ride. The fact that this ride now ranks as the entry with the largest amount of total climb on this site—and by a significant margin—should confirm that my initial intimidation was well warranted. It's an option that should satisfy riders who like a challenging romp through remote backroads.

I have an addition to my list of rides that are away from the Bay Area. In fact, this one is probably in the outermost reaches of the driving range I'm willing to undertake as part of a biking trip with an overnight stay. Its location on the other side of the Sierras and near the Nevada border may not exactly be convenient (especially when it's not serviced by any fast freeways), but Lower Rock Creek Trail is actually a nice gem. Its appeal might become clearer once you learn that this singletrack was built for mountain biking in the first place.

Lower Rock Creek Trail is essentially an unbroken descent when followed in a southeasterly direction. This makes it a natural candidate for shuttle rides, which, I understand, is a popular way of riding it. I didn't have a way of arranging that for my own ride here, so I did it in the form of a round trip. While doing that, I did the climb back to the beginning via the Lower Rock Creek Road that parallels the trail closely, in order to save overall ride time because I had to drive back home to the Bay Area in the remaining part of the day.

Just as it is whenever I write about a far away trail for a target audience centered around the Bay Area, one big question surrounding this ride is "is it worth the trip?" For someone who has an existing inclination to take day trips around California for the sake of bike rides, it's easily worth a try. However, if you've never done that before, this trail would not be my top recommendation for your first bike trip with an overnight stay. But, I was certainly not disappointed by one bit for having done the ride, despite a return drive that was stretched to more than six hours.

This ride represents the shortest route you can follow for sampling Ridgecrest Boulevard, providing the easiest way to check out this local treasure as long as you're okay with a significant and relatively long climb. It was, therefore, a serious weakness that the content for this ride had a number of shortcomings until now: it was missing a full photo set, it was traversing Ridgecrest in the less fun direction (uphill), and it had minimal text in its description. I've now fleshed it out and fixed all of these, in addition to changing the starting point to Stinson Beach, thereby allowing much better options for some post-ride treats as soon as you complete the ride. I only wish I could provide photos from springtime in order to show the beauty of this road at its most jaw-dropping, but that will have to wait for a later update.

Repack Road may not be the most interesting or the most fun trail even within its immediate vicinity, but no one can deny the fascination it holds for anyone even remotely interested in the history of mountain biking due to the central position it holds in the origin story of the sport. While Repack was represented on this site since day one, the only ride route I used to show here that included Repack Road was optimized more for minimum effort than for maximum fun. I've now added what should be the preferred route for intermediate to advanced riders who are interested in trying out Repack Road. This variation uses less road mileage on the way up and includes an excellent stretch through the technical singletrack of Camp Tamarancho instead, while also incurring more elevation gain and slightly more overall mileage in the process. I think this version qualifies as more of a "must-try" ride for any riders beyond beginner level.

Meanwhile, the original Repack ride route I represented on the website is still on the list, with the exception of having its title revised (so that its core purpose of traversing Repack Road is clearer, as it is with this new version) and having some of its text and map links a bit more fleshed out.

The content for the Joaquin Miller ride on this site had originally been posted in 2010. Since then, a number of things changed in the trail network of this park; some significant, some less so. Coupled with a few details about the original ride route that left room for improvement, I felt that these changes meant that the information of the Joaquin Miller ride was due for an overhaul. That overhaul is now done. I hope this bumps up the usefulness and relevance of my coverage of this East Bay treasure.

For those who are curious, here are the things that changed:

• The ridiculous portion of Castle Park Trail is now excluded from the ride route. I think the original path followed by the old ride route at the bottom of this trail has ceased to exist since the bottom of Cinderella Trail was re-routed anyway. So, you can say that this change was half due to my preference and half arising from re-routing.
  
  
• I've also reshuffled the ride route to traverse Chaparral Trail downhill, unlike the old route, which did it in the uphill direction. The uphill traversal wasn't because I had thought it was preferable; it was merely to use the trail as a shortcut for the sake of the economy of covering as much of the park's trails with as little repetition as possible. But, I understand that it looked misleading to those who didn't read the ride description in detail. So, due to this change as well as the preceding one, the route is considerably different now, especially in how it repeats Sequoia-Bayview Trail (one portion of it is traversed three times), for the sake of covering as many trails as possible in their preferable direction. Admittedly, this will be of interest only to those who are interested in repeating the ride "verbatim".
  
  
• The re-routing of the lower end of Cinderella Trail was verbally covered in the description of the ride but not yet reflected in the route plot on my map. It now is.
  
  
• Similarly, the bypass of the old "Two-Dollar Hill" climb at the upper end of Sunset Trail was noted in the description text, but not represented in the ride's track. Also fixed.
  
  
• At the time of my original ride, Sinawik Cabin was boarded up but still standing and my ride photos showed it in that state. Now, only its foundation remains. The photos of the ride now reflect the current appearance of this site, so that those who see the photos might not get excited only to be set up for disappointment.
  
  
• The old ride route, as well as the description text, failed to include anything about one of the nice stretches of singletrack in the park: Sunset Loop Trail. It's now part of the route and is described in the text. However, I realized after the fact that I did it in the potentially less preferable direction. I suppose it's becoming a rule that at least one JMP trail is represented in its less-than-ideal direction on this site...
  
  
• If the current set of trail signs in the park are to be believed, the short trail labeled on the online map as Harold Ireland Trail is now considered merely a continuation of Sunset Loop Trail. I'm not sure if this was intentional or is just a signage snafu, and this trail wasn't really mentioned in my ride info in anything other than a photo caption. In any case, even my photo captions mention no trail names that you won't see on the signs in the park anymore.

Are you serious enough about mountain biking to be interested in making some money out of it? This Craigslist posting was brought to my attention by a viewer of this site. It's about a head coach position for a high school mountain biking team in Marin, though the posting is already a month old. I'm not sure how common such opportunities normally are, but I don't see anything wrong with posting this one here. Pass it along to anyone whom you think might be interested.

I was hoping that I could manage to avoid a slowdown in the updates to the website during my summer travel season this year, but a combination of obligations piled up on top of a couple of travel plans once again and resulted in this six-week dry spell in my stream of ride updates. No worries. Here's the first of a number of updates to the site that have been waiting in the pipeline for a few months. Having no other weekend-eating plans in my immediate future, I think I should be able to resume a higher pace in the addition of new content to the site in the coming weeks.

This one is a casual ride. Due to its impressive (and growing) length, Iron Horse Regional Trail had been on my radar since the beginning. I haven't acted too quickly in finding an opportunity to try out this trail, but better late than never. It would make little sense for people to drive here from other places in order to ride on Iron Horse (like I did for the sake of representing it on this site), but this trail is a good resource for those living within easy access of it.

The next new out-of-area ride for the website is a leftover that has been waiting on my backlog since this spring. Salmon Falls is not going to be news to any riders from the Sacramento area or to anyone who has done any amount of biking in that vicinity. It's for good reason! I've found this ride to be more satisfying than both Forest Hill Divide and New Melones, which are the two other rides that are, respectively, the closest one and the most similar one to Salmon Falls represented in the out-of-area rides list on this site at the moment. It also doesn't hurt that it's one of the options closest to the Bay Area that are currently listed in that section. I might not be willing to drive from San Francisco to do this ride repeatedly but, knowing what I now know about the ride, I do find it easily worth one try.

Some viewers of the site may notice that this ride is not accompanied by a geotagged photo map. The EveryTrail website, which I use for geotagged maps, has become flaky lately and their functionality for uploading a new ride has not been working in the last few days. I figured I'd post the ride without a geotagged map rather than delaying the addition of the ride until they fix things. Unfortunately, this is only the latest piece of evidence for the noticeable decline of EveryTrail over the last year or so. All indications point to a need for me to come up with an alternate solution for geotagged maps as soon as possible. Until I can pull that off, the geotagged photo map functionality of the website may have to remain a bit patchy and inconsistent for a while. I apologize for that in advance.

It's not that often that a top-tier ride locale in our area acquires a brand-new, bike-legal singletrack, but that is exactly what has just happened at Skeggs Point. Having learned about it thanks to a viewer comment left on the "Suggestion 2" ride for Skeggs Point on this site about a week ago, I have done a ride at Skeggs just yesterday to try out the new Oljon Trail. It turns out that that user comment may have been left on the very day this new trail was opened to the public, because a ranger I encountered during my ride yesterday said that the trail had opened only "last week".

While starting out at its top as an uninteresting fire road, most of this new trail is actually singletrack and it descends with plenty of switchbacks to meet Steam Donkey somewhere between the two tough climbing spells that you'd encounter when doing that latter trail in its entirety in the downhill direction. I've now updated the "Suggestion 3" ride to follow this new trail instead of riding on Skyline Boulevard to get to the very beginning of Steam Donkey. I think this qualifies as an improvement to this ride because it avoids the risk (and monotony) of riding in traffic even for that short distance, as well as making the ride slightly shorter and reducing its total elevation gain a little bit; not to mention the fact that the new Oljon Trail is more fun than those initial stretches of Steam Donkey anyway.

Incidentally, I've also kept the original version of this ride for those who might like to get their hands on a GPS track of the entire length of Steam Donkey or to see its photos. It's now linked from the main ride page as an alternate version of this ride.

The Pacifica ride listed here was not exactly out of date or lacking in content. Still, I decided to expand the ride route to include an out-and-back extension into Gray Whale Cove Trail that, until now, was only being explained in the text as a possibility. I think this is a worthwhile addition and means the ride route more completely represents the majority of legal trail options available from this starting point. The photo set is also replaced with a completely new one now, in addition to the changes to all of the stats, naturally. One possibly odd side effect of this change is that more than half of the ride route now appears to take place on what I've classified as a "paved trail". (The paved percentage used to appear only as 35% before this change.) This is because a good chunk of that extension onto Gray Whale Cove Trail takes place on more of the crumbling pavement of Old San Pedro Mountain Road.

The ride title that used to be "Pacifica to North Peak" is also changed to simply "Pacifica" now. I think that's fair since the route no longer consists of a straight climb right to that peak.

I wouldn't feel I've made good use of spring unless I can put in at least one road ride in the pleasant countryside of northern Marin County during this green season. One such ride I did this spring was a new one for me, so I took the opportunity to add it to the website. This one is not materially different from similar rides already on the site such as the Marshall - Chileno Valley Loop and the Cheese Factory Loop, but I think it still sits in its own little niche in being the shortest and easiest ride in this vicinity that's represented here. On top of that, it provides an excellent excuse to spend some time in Point Reyes Station; which I always appreciate, ride or no ride.

Brushy Peak was not on my radar until a viewer suggested it to me. There aren't many trails here and almost all the trails are of the least interesting kind of East Bay fire roads. The unexpected perk that I've come to discover at Brushy Peak is hidden behind that word "almost" though: There is actually singletrack available here, and parts of this are pretty fun and technical singletrack. The selection is small, but it's there. This is not enough to make this place anything more than a handy option for a workout ride for the locals of the area, but the place still qualifies for representation on this site in the interest of "full coverage", in my opinion.

You don't need too much expert guidance to be able to put together a good road ride in the Peninsula. Pretty much any route you try should result in more than a half-decent ride. Still, I feel this new ride is an option that is worth pointing out as a low-exertion possibility that should please many. As a ride that starts from Half Moon Bay, it's not exactly a "handy option", locationwise, for most people in the Bay Area. But, if your plans will be taking you there for whatever reason and you want to try a road ride while you're there but will be joined by some riders who are not terribly strong, you might want to give this one a try.