Soquel Demo Forest

Typical Santa Cruz mountains. Shady and lots of redwoods and undergrowth with mostly hard packed soil. If youre coming from the South Bay it will be much cooler here.

The riding here consists of laps up one of the three fire roads with descents down one of the 3 singletrack trails. You can take a short and fairly steep climb up either Sulpher Springs or Corral trails to the Ridge Trial, or take the longer and more interesting route down Highland Way (paved) to Buzzard Lagoon Road (dirt). Then you get your choice of coming down Tractor, Braille, or Sawpit. The ride back is on Hinson Mill. In order of technical difficulty you have Tractor as the easiest, then Braille, followed by Sawpit.

Sawpit has the longest descent and hence the longest climb back out, about 300 vertical feet lower than Braille. On this trail you can expect many steep sections and small drops with many roots thrown in for good measure.

Tractor is quite smooth with only one mildy steep section at the top. This is the best option for less experienced riders. There is something here for people with more skills as well, there are several nice log ramps in places.

Two laps up Sulpher Springs and down Sawpit once and then Tractor or Braille will run you about 17 miles and 3400 vertical feet of climbing.

Take highway 17 to Summit Road exit. Cross the highway and continue on Summit until it meets Highland Way. Continue on Highland Way until you reach the parking lot. By continue I mean even when the signs say road closed you must keep going. Update 3/08: Caltrans succeeded in closing the road for good. You can park at the closure and ride about 2 miles to the lot or drive in from the other side from Highway 1. The coords for the parking lot are 37° 4'55.73N 218° 51'8.72W.

Dont leave anything valuable in your car as the lot suffers from breakins as evidenced by the broken glass littering the ground.