Best Places In Northern California To Cruise?

[Yeti1452]

Don't apologize. It was a reasonable question. I'm 100% sure that there are nice rides in my own area that I know nothing about. Also that there are rides that look great on paper but turn out not to be worth the time and effort.

Lived in Sausalito in the 1980s and Orinda in the 1990s. Lots of great road, gravel, and MTB riding nearby in both places at the time, but the road and trail traffic is surely worse now. Ebikes weren't a thing back then, so no idea about access now.

Leaving ebike access TBD, if you're after scenery and don't mind driving your bike to rides from SF, look into the Mount Tamalpais area in Marin and the Grizzly Peak, Tilden Park, Redwood Park, and Sibley Park areas on the Oakland-Berkeley ridge.

Farther away, there's a huge paved and gravel road network around Mount Diablo. If you've never been to the summits of Tamalpais and Diablo on clear days, do so by any means necessary.

Thank you!

 

[Yeti1452]

On that particular beach, at the start you often see fat tire tracks that go for about 10-20 yards and stop. Its coarse, deep sand with a slope so steep it has a severe riptide. Without the biggest tires aired down to about 6 psi you sink immediately. But your front tire submerges no matter what. My solution is to do it on a 2wd, which that fat ti bike is. Then the ride becomes just very difficult because of the surface - you're one wrong zig away from a (soft) faceplant. I need a big battery to get to the other side in Marina.

Fat tires do fine in general on the beach? My Bike is Fat Tire.

 

[m@Robertson]

Fat tires do fine in general on the beach? My Bike is Fat Tire.

Thats what the other guys who only get 20 yards think. Its deep, coarse sand that is fairly dry. Regardless of how low you put your air pressure - and you do have to lower it - your rear wheel will push the bike forward and the front will want to submerge in the sand, and it does. The only solution is 2wd, which lets the front wheel power forward without being pushed, which keeps it up and on top of the sand. You're certainly welcome to try for yourself but like I said, nobody makes it.

I talked to a ranger at Marina State Beach - there is a station just back a bit from the parking lot - and one of them came after me for going out from the beach on a bike. When he heard I was only coming IN from a few miles down, and taking the trail back, he couldn't believe I had made it. Said they tried bikes, but have to use quads. This pic was taken right after a storm where a drainage pipe lets water out to the sea. You can see the bike sits on top here, but look at how high the sand line is in back on the sidewall, and that was still a wet-ish beach from the storm.

After this pic was taken I switched the drivetrain to a Box 2 derailleur and a really big rear cluster to give me some more options. Its on the big cog in the pic and I needed all that and more.