Waves to wine, beach cruising to Strava test pieces: beautiful Santa Barbara has it all
Recently named a silver-level Bicycle Friendly Community, Santa Barbara is close to biking paradise, no matter how you roll: oceanside cruising on Cabrillo Boulevard or the Obern Trail, wine country tours, and billygoat climbs. Roadies should try Gibraltar Road — a mountaintop finish in the Tour of California a couple years ago — for bragging rights on the so-called Santa Barbara Alpe D’Huez. Or rock the twists and turns through the vineyards of the Santa Ynez Valley.
The vast Los Padres National Forest, at 875,000 acres, is networked with more than 1,200 miles of maintained mountain biking trails, and most of them have steep, rocky climbs and technical descents. Try Elings Park for intermediate features and ascents that don’t burn quite so hard. That same landscape makes for gravel-grinds of the most adventurous kind, including the rough ridgeline of Camino Cielo, which runs east-west some 4,000 feet above the sea.
Don’t miss the Central Coast’s largest organized ride, Ride Santa Barbara 100, which loops from the waterfront to the foothills of Montecito and includes Gibraltar — and 9,000 feet of climbing. If that’s too much, downgrade to 100km (either with or without Gibraltar) or a 34-miler (with only 2,200 feet to climb).