Northern California - Page Mill coverd with loose gravel

The upper part of Page Mill (that belongs to San Mateo county) is covered in about 1" of loose gravel. The coverage starts right where there is a descent before that short nasty uphill at the top (near Montebello open reserve) and goes for about 1.3 miles. I'm not sure how long it will continue this way.

The top of west Alpine (from the stopsign to Skyline) is also covered with loose gravel.

It sounds like they are redoing the asphalt. My street just got done, and it took almost 3 weeks for them to finish the job.

Looks like Alpine or Page Mill may not be a good route for a while. Hate riding on loose gravel on skinny road tires.

Time to break out the CX bike.

Time to break out the CX bike.
CX? Maybe we need a NorCal Slang thread?

CycloCross

hopefully they won't do as they did two years ago on West OLH -- cover the road in gravel and leave as is. as I recall, it took about 2 months for the cars on WOLH to clear the road from the gravel.

That's because WOLH gets about 2 cars a day.

The stuff on Page is chip seal, and they were especially generous with the gravel. But Page gets a lot of traffic, so it'll get worn off by cars pretty quick.

The stuff on Page is chip seal, and they were especially generous with the gravel. But Page gets a lot of traffic, so it'll get worn off by cars pretty quick.

and how is going to help repair the road surface on Page Mill?

They road crew will let passing cars compress the new road surface for a few days, then they'll sweep off the excess gravel.

My friend and I rode our mountain bikes from Alpine to Pagemill to Russian Ridge yesterday, and he noticed they have white markers for potholes from the portion of Pagemill between Alpine and Skyline that still needs work.

and how is going to help repair the road surface on Page Mill?

The way chip seal works is they spray sticky tar on the road, then coat it with gravel. The gravel sticks to the tar and forms a coating. It sticks better after it's been driven on; the cars pack the gravel down. Sometimes they sweep up the left over gravel later, and sometimes they don't.

It is common on rural roads in NorCal. It's cheaper than asphalt paving and it holds up under rural use. Sometimes they use tar that melts in the summer sun and creates dangerous slick spots; that happened on Skyline a few years ago. The contractor had to come back and re-do it with better seal.

ok. thanks for the explanation.

I climbed Page Mill yesterday. The new cheap-seal section has been swept and is reasonably hard and smooth, but there is still a lot of loose gravel. Be very careful when descending, especially that short steep section adjacent to Montebello OSP.