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Any bike trail on the Northwest Coast of California is going to be great. Lots of scenery and nothing boring or tedious. But, one of the most awesome is from a place where I lived for about five years.

The Lost Coast Classic is a 100-mile bike ride that has everything but high altitude alpine. This doesn’t mean that you couldn’t see snow in the right time of the year. Ocean beach, salt marsh swamp, mountain passes, redwood forests, deer, seals, whales, cranes, elk, egret, etc…

I lived and worked in several of the small communities in the area including a stint as the program director and morning on-air talent for the AM radio station in Fortuna. I spent many an afternoon and evening fishing and otherwise playing on the beaches of the Pacific and the rocky edges of the Eel river only to get up before the crack of dawn to be on the air while my family and friends slept soundly in their tents.

The north coast of California is somewhat of a small microcosm of American pop culture sustaining a period of about twenty years behind everyone else. If you go to a beach near L.A., you are just as much likely to see handheld video gamers as you are surfers. But in Humboldt and DelNorte Counties, a lot more boys still fish and milk cows than just about anywhere else.

Hard work and harder play is the rule over there. I had one family member that made part of his living from doing nothing more than cutting redwood burls off of the upper reaches of redwood roots and sold them to local outlets wholesale. Truly, vacationers stopping in Rio Dell and Scotia for gasoline and Twinkies would actually pay up to $20 for these little chunks of live forest to take home and grow.

Here’s the trail info from Trails.com

Map

Lost Coast Classic
Preview: Hanging precipitously on the edge of California, the Lost Coast is like a chaste beauty living in an ivory tower. Despite its eye-popping splendor, the inaccessibility of the land locks it into virtual isolation. When Highway 101 turns inward at Legget, it takes with it the majority of auto-propelled tourists. Only the most intrepid of travelers, the ones who can handle not having a major highway or city anywhere nearby, make it to the isolated shores of the Lost Coast. Because of this, the area is ideal for cycling. The secluded backroads that make up this ride range from dense, dark redwood groves to a jagged coastline of black-sand beaches stretching out to meet the Pacific Ocean. The ride takes you almost 75 miles before your wheels actually roll along the Lost Coast. For the sake of convenience, the ride starts at an accessible locale and gets progressively “lost” with every mile. Terrain: Three extended climbs, many rolling hills, heavy winds with gusts of sand on coast. Weekend and tourist traffic on Avenue of the Giants. Temperatures can vary dramatically, so dress in layers.

Trail Stats & Information

Source; Trails.com, steephill.tv