Ok, here's what the ride looks like from the beach:


There's two places where you can start, at the Gibraltar side or the Old San Marcos. This was the old stagecoach road that the Wells Fargo Coach took to get into Santa Barbara back in the 1800s when California still belonged to Mexico. The overall route looks like this:




The steeper climb starts at Old San Marcos and goes from 50m elevation to 450m in about 5.5km. It crosses over highway-154 and becomes Painted Cave. This section goes from 450m to 900m in 4.5km. At that point, you're at the backbone of the mountain range. Taking Camino Cielo to the right gradually has you climbing to 1200m at La Cumbre Peak in about 25km.

However, I like to start at the other end, Gibraltar road. This starts at 200m and goes to 1000m in 12km. You start out higher and have a more gradual climb. Taking a left a Camino Cielo at the top also give you another gradual climb to 1200m as well.

I like going in this direction because the scenery is better. At the beginning of the ride, you can look back towards the ocean and get a view like this:



The climb is more gradual, gives you more time to warm up. Across the entire backbone of the mountain, you actually can see down on both sides, Santa Barbara on the left and the valley on the right, amazing views. At the highest point, La Cumbre peak, you can look west at the remaining part of the ride:



Some points has the road at the top of the mountain-range and you can look left down towards the ocean as well as right down into the valley:


Then I like the steeper descent down Painted Cave and Old San Marcos. It's much steeper, tighter and more technical of a downhill. Requires full maximum-braking going into the tight switchback turns (over 30 of them). And if you sprint out of the corners down the hill, you can get up to 75kph before the next switchback! What fun!

Total loop distance back to the starting point is about 80km with total elevation gain of around 1300m.