Hello.
I'm planning on cycling the Pacific Coast Route this May. I have experience with touring/bikepacking throughout New England and some in Arizona along the Arizona Trail. I've never biked in the Western USA, but I'm planning this trip to end off my gap year ceremoniously. I have a few questions regarding the route.

A) Logistically, I need to bike the route South to North (likely San Diego to Seattle). This is because I'm meeting my family for a graduation in Seattle in June, and I'd like to arrive by bike. I've heard both poor reviews and alright reviews about the S-N route. Is it that bad of an experience? Will it be wholly unenjoyable or simply a bit more of a grind? I'm willing to sacrifice a bit of tailwind comfort in order to make this trip work out logistically.

B) Bikepacking in the past I've typically rented mountain bikes. For this route (and others to come) I'm looking for more of a touring/gravel/hybrid. Definitely drop bars, access points for a rear rack, panniers, etc. Looking into Surly Long Haul, Cannondale Topstone 4, and others. I'm a tall guy, need a larger frame. Hoping to keep the expenses beneath 1500. Any good recs for bikes that fit these specs? I have plenty of bike shops around me so could also piece something together.

Any help or wisdom is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Don't do south to north.
You are likely to have headwinds every day and you will hate everyone and everything.
Logistically, it's best to start in June in the north. (Early or late June??)
If you can't do that starting in May in the north will likely be wet.
If it's wet you have SW winds, dry NW winds.

I've only done extended touring southbound in late spring and summer.
I have had a few wet days with SW winds and the winds were relentless.
Same goes for the few short segments I did northbound against the wind.
The wind never gives you a break and it wears on you.

If you must go south to north, I'd suggest an interior route.
Not the Sierra-Cascades because it will still be snowbound in May / early June.
You can start with the S-C up to Tehachapi, but then stay in the Sierra footnills.
The Sierra foothills are lovely in May,

Follow the Sacramento River in northern California,
then some challenging riding in Southern Oregon over the Siskiyous.
Like the Sacramento Valley, the Willamette Valley is lovely in late spring.
You can do a loop around Mount Rainier and come into Tacoma along the Green River Trail.

Or -
You can ride on the eastern side of the Cascades which is drier and sunnier - more remote.
(You do not want to ride on US 97 thru Bend - scenic but killer traffic.)
And then ride thru cherry country in the Yakima Valley and take the Palouse to Cascades into Seattle.

PM me if you're interested in details.

I have gone N to S once in entirety and otherwise two to half a dozen times in most parts. Good weather brings prevailing winds off the coast and north. While there can be days with light/no wind, I agree going this direction would be a grind...

If it were me and I wanted to arrive by bike, I would go N to S from Seattle to Tijuana followed by the Amtrak trains from San Diego to Vancouver and then cycle into Vancouver to meet the family.

I left Vancouver the US Memorial day and over next week had one day with heavier rains and two days with showers. On a different trip leaving Portland mid-May had a day with torrential rain near Brookings. So prepare for possibility of wet but not all the time.

I haven't biked the coast, but want to at some point, probably N to S. About the trains:

I met some folks for a week at a house in Oregon, right on the coast. Train from Seattle to Eugene OR was a half day, and cheap, but that was my absolute limit, as the upholstered leather seats were still quite hard and flat. I met someone on the return trip, going from southern Cal to Seattle, and his words were "Never again!" Being able to sleep horizontally on my side in a cabin would be fine, but the price of that is way more expensive than flying. I could have hung a full size bike in the baggage car, but others have related when their train cargo had no hooks and the bike got flailed around in the baggage, or in under-car compartments not designed for bikes. I had a 20" wheel folder so avoided all that, Amtrak regs say you can bring that onboard the passenger car, and just put it on the luggage shelf; I had tons of room for that (end of covid period) and if I needed to, I could have stood the folded bike up vertically and covered with a garbage bag to keep oil off adjacent luggage. Panniers went in the overheads at the seat, but I was prepared to lash together and check in luggage, but never needed to.

I could have biked to and from the coast from Eugene, but there was a dirt-cheap shuttle bus run by the casinos; Did have front bike rack, but my front rack blocked the locking arm; No problem, just folded my bike and brought on board the short-bus. Was a problem: High passenger seating was above windshield height, and I got motion sick; Needed to sit on floor of bus to see out front and avoid that, very uncomfortable, but worked for the hour drive. Next time I will plan on biking.

Regarding bikes... Trek used to make a great tourer, the 520 I think, chrome-moly steel, great factory racks, haven't made in a few years. Masi had an awesome looking tourer, also chrome-moly, amazing looking welds, I think possibly laser, also great factory racks included, and bar-end shifters instead of brifters, IMO, more reliable for a tour, I don't know if they still make. Both were bargains at about USD$1500.

Pics of folded bike in train car, and on coast, this was not heavy touring but clothes and some food for a week, plus I wore about a 2000 cubic inch backpack, this was just for short biking to and from the train. Really, I brought the bike so I could bike all week, sans cargo.

I did part of it from Astoria to San Francisco in end of May and most of June in 2014. Rarely, we saw people riding from south to north, they had our sympathy.

Starting in May, bring good rain gear.

I wrote up my observations that now are over a decade old, so many are no longer pertinent:
Southt to North Pacific Coast Highway Concerns

You should be able to take Amtrak back North when you need to. I have not riden Amtrak on that route, so I do not know which method they use for bikes. Different routes use different methods. Figure out which route you might want to take and which bike method that route uses first. Then use this link for details.
https://www.amtrak.com/bring-your-bicycle-onboard

Some routes require that you make a reservation for the bike, it might be harder to find a train with room for your bike than it is to find a train with an open seat for you. If you have not ridden Amtrak before, a key point, some Amtrak stations do not handle luggage. You want a station that handles luggage.

Amtrak allows two checked pieces of luggage and your bike would be one piece. So, the rest of your checked luggage has to be one item under 50 pounds. Photo below is from the Amtrak station in Chicago, the yellow duffle on the bench and the handlebar bag on the bike are my two carryon items, the red mesh duffle on the floor holds my four Ortlieb panniers. Thus, my four panniers were one checked item, and my bike the other checked item.



In this example, I was on a route with train side checked bike, I rolled the bike to the luggage car and lifted my bike up to the Amtrak employee in the car.

Regarding choice of bikes, your rear panniers have to be far enough back to give you room for your heels as you pedal. Thus, a good touring bike has longer chainstays than most road or gravel bikes. I have three touring bikes, the photo above is my light touring bike and it has the shortest chainstays of any of my three at 445mm. But a lot of bikes you look at would have even shorter chainstays. Having your weight further back than that can impair handling, as the tail can wag the dog if you have much weight in the rear panniers.

And a good touring bike has a really wide range of gearing.

Amtrak's bike pages - https://www.amtrak.com/bring-your-bicycle-onboard The FAQs page - https://www.amtrak.com/onboard/bring...oard/bike-faqs tell us the Coast Starlight (the longest direct distance) has checked service.

In October 2023, I returned from Seattle to Austin via train. At that time, I took the Empire Builder from Seattle to Chicago and Texas Eagle from Chicago to Austin. I chose that routing rather than via LA in part because I had a roll-on service to bring my bike. This year am thinking of a ride from Portland OR to Reno NV and have made train reservations from Austin to Portland and a different set from Reno to Denver. So trains work for me and why I suggest them.

Thank you all. This has been very helpful. The Amtrak sounds like a great idea. I have a revised plan, and I'd like to hear any thoughts:
- I'm driving cross-country with my bike in mid april, visiting some colleges in Appalachia then cutting north to see some in Wisco/Minnesota. I'm carving out two weeks for this trip so that I can stop for a weekend touring trip (2-3 nights, loop so I can return to my car) maybe in Montgomery County or Driftless area, or anywhere else along the way.
- After Midwest straight shot to Seattle, arriving early May, leaving car with family, then doing Pacific Route N-S.
-Amtrak or flight back up to Seattle early June.

Any thoughts from those more experiences than myself? Recs for small loops along that route?

Yes, I saw same before my trip in 2022. However, I had just done a 1X-2X conversion on my folder, requiring a claw-mount rear derailleur, held on by the axle nut; Heading for the train down my apartment steps, bouncing load on the axle, that comes loose. I fix it, head for the train, but I've just missed the baggage service. I'd be out of luck were it not for it being a folder, so just brought it on board.

I trained south on the regular train, was great. Return trip north, I was on the high cars with the top-edge windows, the Coast Starlight. View wasn't any better, more sideways sway when the car rolled, but worst for me was that the luggage shelves were by the door, one level down; My folding bike in a compact package, and looking like a far more expensive bike with my 2X conversion, I could just see someone grabbing it in 2 seconds and making off with it. So at every stop, I was down there keeping an eye on the bike until we got moving again. So I prefer the regular, single-level cars now, unless going through a mountainous area that has pretty scenery.

I know the trails in Wisc that are near Madison. Nice trails, but are basically your standard rails to trails kind of trails you would see elsewhere. The Wisc state trails require a permit. That is not heavily enforced, you decide if you want to pay for the permit. I always buy an annual permit. I have not been on the trails that are closer to La Crosse than to Madison, can't comment on those trails.
https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/park...sion/trailpass

Blue Mounds State Park in Wisc is located on one of the trails. If you wanted to do an out and back trip, staying in Blue Mounds for a night or two might work well. Sites 101 to 112 are the ones closest to the bike trail. Some of those sites are in the open with no shade, some have shade. If you make a reservation in advance, I would pick ones on the south side of the access road for more shade and privacy.
https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/park...eation/camping
https://widnr.widen.net/s/q2dprvsxf5...campground-map

Driftless area of Wisc has some very hilly terrain. If you decide to explore on the back roads in that area, you might not make a lot of distance.

I am not very familiar with the bike trails in Minnesota, can't comment.

Once you start on the Pacific Coast, you will find that some of the state parks have hiker/biker sites. These are campsites where you do not pay for an entire site, you pay per person and they are much cheaper. I put all of the hiker biker sites along my route in Oregon and California into my GPS in advance based on their state park websites. I had to guess on their location in some cases when I put them in the GPS. That way I could try to plan out a couple days in advance for which hiker biker sites I wanted to stay at. I liked the Oregon sites better than California sites. And some of the sites have homeless people that try to sneak in without paying. Bring a good lock.

One of the nicer hiker biker sites we stayed in, below:



Same site, different angle:



I think the site below was the last campsite we stayed at before we ended our trip in San Francisco.



There are a couple HI Hostels in San Francisco. We stayed three nights at the Fishermans Wharf hostel before we crossed the bay and got on an Amtrak to come home. If you wanted to sight see in San Francisco while you are there, the HI Hostels are a great low budget way to do it.

I'm also a New Englander. I rode 800 miles of the Pacific coast south from Tillamook, OR down to the SF bay area in 2019. I only have three things to add here.

The road generally is winding with much higher speed limits than we have here in the northeast. And there's no room for bicycles on much of it. I found this nerve wracking. Conditions that matched roads I would never ride here in central MA, like 202 down the west side of the Quabbin.

Also, for some reason, many CA drivers won't cross a double yellow line to pass a bicycle -even when they have visibility and no one else is around. A cop told me you can't break the law to follow the law (cant cross the line to give the require 3 feet) He also said he himself would never enforce it in that situation. It's strange and slightly anxiety-inducing to have a line of cars behind you going 15 mph for no good reason. I eventually adopted the practice of just getting off the pavement to let them by.

You will encounter many, many other bicycle tourists doing the route. The great majority of them will be heading south. But the CA and OR state campgrounds have really nice hiker/biker sites that will always have other riders in them. This may be a positive or a negative depending on your interest in comradery.
~

Many many moons ago, I started a USA Perimeter tour in San Diego and went northbound (NB) on the coast. While I did it, I would strongly recommend NOT doing it to anyone unless there was no other choice. I was a young and very strong rider of 23 (just graduated college). Riding NB does not lose "a bit of tailwind", it kills it, grinds in a tree chipper, and then pees on it. There were many days I was struggling in my lowest gears while the SB riders would LITERALLY coast by gleefully shouting "Great day for riding!". I became to really dislike SB riders and it affected my developing a bad "us vs them" mentality! Yet, they did nothing wrong. It was all because of the continual wind giving me difficulty. If you are thinking I was just a novice, that would be wrong. I had already done the TransAm and ridden across 7 states by this trip and easily averaged 6+k miles a year while in college so I was pretty strong.

While not every day was miserable, enough were to take a lot of the enjoyment out of it. Being a dumb Okie, I just hadn't thought/knew about taking the train up the coast, riding back south, and then take it up again to Seattle to continue on my way. In your case, I would highly recommend you start in Seattle (Vancouver if you have a passport), ride to Mexico, and then take the train back to Seattle for graduation. A compromise would be to start in San Fransisco and ride SB because it was along California coast where the winds were the worst. Then you could take the train back to SF and ride NB.

Additionally, along the actual coast, I kept riding over to the southbound side of the road to see the ocean only to have to ride back to the northbound side due to oncoming traffic. You would think being on the northbound side would not reduce the view that much but it really did surprisingly. If I rode SB, the scenery would have been much better.

Finally, I would guess the ratio was at least around 40:1 of SB to NB based on how many NB riders the SB riders said they saw that day. Yet, I only encountered a handful of NB riders during the 30 days it took to ride from Mexico to Vancouver. It would have been nice to be able to ride with others occasionally.

You asked if it really was that bad. Listen to people who have done what you are contemplating and don't repeat our mistakes! That is the sign of wisdom. You don't NEED to ride NB; you WANT to. You asked if it was really that bad. Yes, in my case it was. I was strong enough I could grind through it but it took a lot of enjoyment out of it. While I applaud the desire to ride to the graduation, I can not stress enough DO NOT DO IT. After all, why do it if you are not enjoying it?

Quite far off the coast, but just FYI to anyone visiting Yosemite National Park: When I was last there 20 years ago, most sites with vehicle parking at the site were expensive, however there was "climbing camp" in the valley, which was just like as described above, 5 or more to a campsite, and very cheap, like $5/day I think at the time. No vehicles there, those were parked a short walk away in a common lot. This was just after Labor Day and the crowds were gone, but climbing camp still had a waitlist, I got in within one day. Very enjoyable to me, very social, folks slack-line walking, rolling cigarettes from bulk tobacco (to avoid bigger taxes), etc. Be prepared to be up past dark, but not too bad in terms of noise. I didn't have a bike with me, but I'm sure that would not have been a problem to keep at the camp. I filled my stove fuel bottle with gasoline before the park, no need, in the stout "bear box" at each site to hold food, were gallon cans of white gas that folks bought and then left because not able to bring back on plane. Great time, hiked from the valley to top of Half Dome and back down again in just one day, dark-to-dark. Return trip to SF, found a posting on the bulletin board looking for a ride in exchange for gas money, gladly brought him along.

This is a good call, and you will thank those who recommended going N->S. I, too, have met people going S->N and they were exhausted and miserable.

In Northern California from Eureka to Leggett is about 100 miles, but there are a number of alternate routes roughly parallel to Hwy 101 that get you off the main highway (Avenue of the Giants, Burlington Campground pictured above), such that around 75 miles are on the side roads. At Leggett you start CA-1 and that is the main route until Marin County, where you veer east over to Sausalito and SF proper. In Santa Cruz you again turn off the main Hwy and do not rejoin Hwy 1 until Carmel. Check out the ACA routes, as well as Oregon DOT (ODOT - they have a really nice guide (PDF) to their section of the route. Good luck!

Cyclists are allowed to stay one night only at the backpacker's campground in the Valley, and don't need the wilderness permit the backpackers require. IMO, lo these many years ago, it was much preferable to the cramped and crowded climbers' camp.

You can also always put on a hangdog look and ask to share one of the big RV's spots, offering to chip in the for the cost. I've never been turned down at a campground where I had to resort to that.

And yes, N to S. +++++++

glad you revised things.
I'm another guy who has done Portland Astoria down to past San Fran (flew from Montreal) many years ago in June and have vivid memories of the very rare poor buggers going the other way.
I've done lots of bike trips over the decades, with lots of memories that stand out, but one of them is a very weird, unbelieving feeling of somewhere along the west coast on a steep twisty bit of road, being literally pushed up a very steep hill by a very strong rear gust zooming along the coastline. Practically not pedalling or very soft pedalling while going up a steep hill is a very unique experience, and thats why the memory is so strong.
As someone who has had a few unpleasant experiences with consistent, very strong headwinds and dangerous sidewinds while touring, it aint fun, and can be both demoralizing and dangerous (as noted by the guy earlier who did S to N as a strong young rider and just hated it).

Don't have other short trip suggestions, but you will enjoy the west coast trip.
On my trip, I met a number of riders who started in Vancouver and said they would have skipped that whole section if they had known the scenery was be a bit monotonous. I flew into Portland and took a bus to Astoria to start my trip, so if you are tight on days, perhaps think of skipping a bit and taking a bus or something further down---but it will be easy for you to figure out your timing and there is tons of info on this route, ie campgrounds , everything, so easy to roughly plan out.

I also took a bus from Portland to Astoria. I had made reservations long in advance for a motel in Astoria near the Amtrak bus stop. That worked really well for us since we arrived in Astoria in the evening. We had taken Amtrak to Portland, so that simplified things. Bought our bus tickets to Astoria through Amtrak.



In Astoria, the Amtrak bus stops at a street corner, no building, no facilities. Our bikes were boxed, we had to search for a place to get rid of our Amtrak boxes in Astoria.

That was over a decade ago. If I was going to repeat that trip now, I would first try to find out if we can leave the boxes at the Amtrak station in Portland. Some but not all buses that contract with Amtrak will accept an unboxed bike.

I never knew about "backpacker's camp", not sure if a choice back then. The folks at the climber's camp were a culture distinct from myself, and I enjoyed encountering that. Walking back in the dark from Half Dome, my AAA (non-LED) minimaglite battery failing, the campsite came into view, and dozens of small, pale-blue lights, all wearing the then-new LED headlamps, and I thought, "It's a new species, the Headlamp People."

Yes, that hangdog look, I was car-traveling years before that, had stopped at a campground in AZ and was set, late afternoon a camper van had circled the loop twice, I flagged them down and invited them to fit in at my spot, easy, and they were very grateful.

That's where they put me when I showed up in Yosemite Valley without a reservation on my first tour in 2016 (live and learn) It was my first experience out west (I've lived in New England my whole life) and just didn't know that national parks fill up such that people make reservations months or even years ahead. And, FWIW, I found there was no place for me in Zion NP later that trip. I had to wait in line for hours with the RVs and car campers for the first come first served spots they offer at one of the campgrounds.That wait was actually pretty enjoyable, though. A small, temporary community. People making coffee for and feeding each other. It was sweet.