Day 4 - Mt Tam Mountain bike ride

California Autumn 2005 - Day 4 - Mt Tam Mountain bike ride

We woke up and checked the weather was ok on weather.com the forecast was good, so we had another big breakfast and headed over to FairFax to start our next ride.

We decided to do another big ride this time riding the Deer Park to Stinson Beach ride.

From Deer Park to Eldridge Grade

We parked the SUV at the Deer Park Trail head, and rode up Deer park FR, then along Shaver Grade and then up lower Eldridge grade.

View of SF from Eldridge Grade

On Eldridge Grade with Lake Lagunitas in background

We headed up Eldridge Grade which started out as a easy double track, but got more interesting towards the top with loads of loose rock on the trail, we then road up the road to the top of Mt Tam. We then headed down the Willow Camp trail which was a hoot, very steep and fast heading all the way down to Stinson beach.

Eldridge grade to Mt Tam

Willow camp trail

Sinson Beach

Willow camp trail

On the way down we had our first accident of the holiday on one of the switch backs towards the bottom of the trail my wife crashed and gashed her knee, luckily i was carrying an emergency cyclist first aid kit so we were able to clean it up and patch up the cut on the trail. We then carried on down the trail to Stinson beach.

Willow camp trail

We then road along the HW 1 until we came to the turning for McCurdy Trail, this trail went steeply up to the Bolinas Ridge Fire road. The McCurdy trail wasn't much fun to ride up as it was fairly over grown with nasty scratchy plants on either side, and it went steeply up a long way. Luckily the pay back when reached the Bolinas Ridge was worth it. The Bolinas ridge was a great ride through a red wood forest. After riding some fun trails we ended up on the Sir Francis Drake Rd, and rode back to fairfax on this road stopping at the Lagunitas Store for munchies along the way. We rode about 46 miles in total.

Giant Redwoods

DAY 5