milky lizzard

I am the Southern California team member for the Rapha Continental. We are in the process of trying to tie down a road bike route for Santa Barbara to ride and document in the next couple of weeks. We are looking for a route that is approximately 100 miles or more that involves Gibraltar Rd. Unfortunately, I have never had the pleasure to ride in Santa Barbara, so I am in need of some assistance. Please let me know if you have any Epic routes that you could suggest we ride, you know, the kind you tell your kids about….



P.S. We love gravel, dirt, and pain.

umd

Does it need to start and end at the same place? If not, I would recommend starting at the beach, riding up State Street, winding over to Gibraltar, up Gibraltar, across Camino Cielo, down Stagecoach, then the 154 to Solvang and/or Los Olivos. If it needs to be a round trip, you would probably need to head back around this point. If not, there are a lot of cool routes you could take around the Santa Ynez valley area. If you want to make it really epic, you could go up Figueroa mountain and you would have over 12000 feet of climbing...

umd

Also, I should add, you can look at my MotionBased log for lots of rides in the area

umd

Was just rereading this and noticed the part about gravel and dirt. There is one epic ride I've wanted to do but have not yet done, as it involves some unpaved portions. At least one teammate (that is also a mountain biker) rode the unpaved portion on a road bike but recommended a cyclocross bike. Anyway, after you go 9 miles up Gibraltar, it dumps you out on East Camino Cielo, and that goes about 10 miles to highway 154. After you cross the highway, it turns into West Camino Cielo, which you can take for another several miles pefore the pavement ends. From there, its probably another 10 miles or so unpaved befoew the pavement returns, and then its a 12 mile descent from 4000 feet to the beach at Refugio, and then 10 miles back to the edge of town, and another 15 or so back to the base of gibraltar. Altogether thats probably about 10000 feet of climbing. Refugio though actually goes down both sides of the mountain, you can take it to the coast or you can take it to the valley, into Santa Ynez, and then loop back around either along the coast through Gaviota, or back over San Marcos pass.

milky lizzard

Here's the potential route starting out at State Street:
https://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1880071

Let me know if any of you have headed this direction, and thanks for the help!

umd

At best most of that's a fire road. I can't even picture where that road forks off from Gibraltar, so its got to be pretty small. I don't know whether that's even passable, but maybe it is. I can ask the mountain bikers on my team, they are probably more familiar with that area. In any event, there is a huge valley in there and the backside mountain range is about 6000 feet high so I imagine that there is probably more than 20,000 feet of gain on that route . Also, I do know that there are no roads that come onto Stagecoach like that, just somebody's ranch out there. Assuming the rest of it is passable, you are best off coming up Paradise Road to get to Stagecoach. Coming up Refugio from Santa Ynez I've heard is very rocky and technical, so I assume this is a mountain bike trip. You didn't specify, but I think you would have a hard time on a cross bike and it would be pretty much impossible on a road bike...