Introduction

This route was defined by Andreas Vogel and is described on his Cycling California site.

Many thanks to Andreas for working so hard to identify a route with great scenery, and little traffic. Although it does include some dirt stretches, it is not a technical mountain bike ride; the dirt stretches were chosen when they were the most scenic and least trafficked option available.

This blog attempts to provide additional information for anybody planning to ride Andreas’ route. We have organized the blog into some general information, followed by one post per day of our trip. We organize the daily route information this way because it reflects our own trip, not because we think anybody else would want to ride at our pace.

We liked everything about this route and recommend it without hesitation. The scenery every day is lovely and very diverse: coastal mountains, a little bit of the coast, old growth redwoods, oak woodlands, big rivers, and fine views of Shasta and Lassen. 25-30% of the route is on unpaved roads and most of those are high quality hard packed dirt or gravel. Nearly all of the paved road portions are on quiet rural roads.

Our trip was 820 miles with 73,705 feet of altitude gain, and took us 14 full days. We started and finished the trip in Willows and rode clockwise, October 5-18, 2008.

If you have any questions or want any advice, please don’t hesitate to post a response and we’ll do our best to get back to you.