This is a short ride, mostly on paved roads. It's really just an "Old La Honda Road climb", with a return by the nearest option that's not back down the same road. This is one of the rides on my "weekday morning ride before work" list. It's one I prefer for this purpose especially when it has rained recently and I'd like to stay away from most trails. The only trail component of this ride is on a fire road without any tree cover.

Old La Honda Road is well-known to road bikers, I gather. I sometimes refer to some trails as being a "benchmark climb". It appears that this particular road might be the mother of all benchmark climbs for road riders in this area. I don't think that's because it's a particularly challenging climb, since it is not. It must be because it's evenly graded, well-defined, and convenient. I saw one web page that quotes a time even for Lance Armstrong's climb of this road, but I couldn't find any other evidence to substantiate it. There was also a race called "Low-Key Hill Climb Series" that used to be held along this climb, apparently.

This particular ride starts from the Windy Hill Open Space parking lot. (This lot opens at sunrise, as of this writing.) You could also park at any other suitable spot you can find along the stretch of this loop on Portola Road, but I don't believe parking on the road side is legal, for the most part. There is a wide gravelly road-side area roughly midway between the Old La Honda Road junction and the start of Sand Hill Road, though. Of course, this is assuming you'd like to do the climb first. If you're okay with descending first, then you can look for parking along the Skyline Boulevard stretch of the loop instead.

After a flat stretch of the ride on Portola Road (part of which is accompanied by a road-side trail), you turn onto Old La Honda Road. The road starts out in a mostly suburban setting. As you get higher, the homes become less and less frequent and you enter more of a redwood forest environment. The road has very little traffic, though you'll always see a few cars.

The climb lasts for less than 3.5 miles and the average grade is quoted as 7% (with brief spurts where maximum grade is said to reach 15% occasionally). If you've done any road climb at all in your life, this will not come as any kind of challenge. Like I said, it's suitable for being a morning ride, or a ride where you can return to time yourself to see how your fitness has progressed.

Once you reach Skyline Boulevard, you turn left and the entrance of the trail portion of this ride in Windy Hill Open Space is only a short and moderate climb away. You take Spring Ridge Trail downhill through that park. 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).

I should point out that, while I did say this is a weekday morning ride that I prefer to do after rains in order to stay away from trails, there was at least one ride I did here two days after some rain and a couple of spots on Spring Ridge Trail were like waterslides! (To be fair, that was toward the end of a season that was very rainy in general, though.) A partial slide down the mud on a steep fire road may not match many people's notion of fun. In fact, my riding buddy slipped and fell off his bike in one of those muddy sections that day. Then again, for some people fond of adrenaline, that might count as bonus fun. In other words, while you may consider this ride after rains because it's mostly on pavement, don't take that as a guarantee that the trail portion of the ride will be completely dry.