This mixed ride over trails and pavement joins together three open space preserves along Skyline Boulevard, with a short cruise on Skyline itself. This ride (or, more commonly, its shorter version that bypasses Russian Ridge by continuing all the way on Skyline) is one of my favorite weekday-morning rides to do before going to work. That is, at least, for parts of the year when the sun rises fairly early, because the ride is a bit on the long side for a pre-work ride.

You park at and start from Windy Hill Open Space. (The parking lot is unlocked at sunrise, as of this writing.) A short trail ride through this park drops you onto pavement at Alpine Road where the majority of your climb will be done. Alpine Road is initially a public road open to traffic. Then the paved part of the road ends and "old" Alpine Road continues on as a fire road. This portion of the road was completely open to traffic all the way to Skyline Boulevard until the 1960s, apparently (beyond which Alpine Road is still open to car traffic all the way to the coast even today).

This is a reasonable fire-road climb. Its steepest section barely reaches an average grade of 8%. There is, however, a short singletrack "detour" section to get around a washout on the main road. This singletrack averages more like 13%, but only lasts for a quarter mile. At the same time, this technical singletrack provides a nice diversion from the steady fire-road climb (even in the uphill direction, with its several steep bursts; though downhill is still more fun, as usual).

The climb on Alpine Road ends when you hit the pavement on Page Mill Road. From there, it's an almost-flat road ride for less than a mile to the entrance of Russian Ridge. At this point, you also have the option to turn north on Skyline Boulevard and follow it all the way to Windy Hill in order to save some time, as I mentioned above.

After entering Russian Ridge, the ride follows the same route as the first half of the Russian Ridge ride that I have also listed on this site. You can follow the details of this portion on that page.

When you reach Skyline Boulevard at the other end of Russian Ridge, you turn left and continue north. This segment of the ride becomes pretty scenic as you enter the less wooded areas near Windy Hill. There are spots on Skyline Boulevard where you can see the bay and the ocean at the same time (if the marine layer permits it).

Once you arrive back at (this time the top end of) Windy Hill Open Space, you follow Spring Ridge Trail. This is a fire road descent almost all the way to the parking lot. But, the views of the bay in front of you still keep you nicely entertained (that is, if the steeper portions of the descent don't).