I needed to go to Geyserville today to pick up a case of wine futures at Murphy-Goode and visit with some of my wife’s relatives, so I decided to fit a bike ride into our trip. Their house is close to Geysers Road, so I biked down that way from their house and started the climb. As the road started to pitch up past Red Winery Road, I kept up a pretty fast pace. I began to regret sprinting out of the saddle as the road really began to get steep. Before starting the ride, I had no idea how steep and long this climb would be. Mistake.
Not too far into the climb, the whole right side of the road had eroded away from below and dropped about eight feet from the level of the left side of the road. Farther up there were two stretches of about 100 feet of mud and gravel, but otherwise the road was in pretty good shape. There were a couple of cattle grates, but they were in good shape and were mainly a concern on the descent.
Finally, after about 4.5 continuous miles of climbing I got to a flat spot where a road went off to three ranches. Looking at the Geysers Road elevation profile on the Santa Rosa Cycling club website, I think I had done about 1900 feet of climbing at that point. That’s an 8% average gradient. Next time we go up there and I do this ride, I’m going to pace myself more sensibly so I can do the full road out and back. I’m looking forward to Pine Flat Road, too. The last two miles of that climb average just under 10.5%.