Pine Canyon Rd - SoCal

Pine Canyon Rd near Gorman, CA is another ride that parallels a major highway. It’s a surviving fragment of the Southern California 1915 Ridge Route system, which was the very first paved road connecting the northern edge of the Los Angeles Basin near Castaic to the Central Valley. Ridge Rd had 697 curves in about 48 miles in 1915 and followed the crest of the ridge tops.

Pine Canyon Rd in present day is a distant echo of that first road and a dramatic juxtaposition to Highway 138 to the north which runs parallel to the present day Pine Canyon. The traffic is there. You are here- enjoying a road that follows the contours of the land.

Pine Canyon Rd rolls through oak-studded hills transitioning between forest service land and county-maintained roads. A pathway that follows or intersects older travel corridors going back to early 20th-century—and even pre-automobile—routes.

Pine Canyon Rd starts from Highway 138 as a non-descript side road. I wonder where that goes, is how it always starts for me. What it leads to is a canyon paradise for bikers, both the powered and non-powered kind. Pine Canyon starts off a day ride of zigzagging eastward through the San Gabriel Mountains.

The plan goes some thing like this: Gorman > Pine Canyon > San Franciscito Canyon > Bouquet Canyon > Soledad Canyon > Sand Canyon > Little Tujunga Canyon > Big Tujunga Canyon > Angeles Forest Highway > Mount Wilson Observatory.

And you can ride all that before lunch.

https://www.pashnittours.com/southern-california