Chino Hills gravel hits a lot of high notes, but that’s also the reason some caution needs to take place.
The two biggest questions I get about routes are how is the riding and what are the views like?
The answers for Chino Hills are simple because it scores high in both, even providing a lot of choose your own adventure opportunities with the number of trails inside.
I’ve been meaning to do a gravel guide for years, but every chance I’ve had prior has been affected by rain as the state park is sensitive on when to allow users back on the trail.
When Thank Gravel It’s Friday decided to hold their own group ride, I had to jump on especially with the local expertise of Jace and Anton leading us around.
Our loop started up Telegraph Canyon featuring a six mile climb that was super palatable hugging around its 3% average grade.
Flowing between the rocky ridges, the big reveal hit at the summit where the ride’s key feature was catching the spring bloom in full effect.
The yellows from the black mustard plants shifted with your perspective seeing the density shift with your angling.
After a joyride of a descent, we had a little regroup in the mix of it all seeing this unreal rolling carpet I wanted to explore in every direction.
We headed north to do a roughly five mile loop up Bane Ridge with climbing on the first that was relatively light until the final push.
While the downhill was playful both visually and experientially, it wasn’t just cyclists out there wanting to experience this.
There were a lot of others out there for the ‘gram making the group pump our brakes a bit riding with a lot of caution.
At the same time, had we done the ride a month later, the ridge would have been highly overgrown as these invasive plants transform into whips making a ride like this improbable.
Our next segment was a partial out and back up Bobcat Ridge that alleviated a lot of those issues with almost an industrial width fire road giving lots of space and few hikers being a little more out of the way.
This left our final component riding up South Ridge after backtracking a little off of Telegraph Canyon.
It’s a real workhorse of a climb punching above its weight roughly two and a half miles after turning off the tarmac with long stretches where you’ll empty out your gears and wish you had a better selection of them.
Fortunately, this segment ends on a high note using a regular fire road width giving some space to open it up on the descent and spot hikers from afar.
Overall, Chino Hills gravel is a great experience, but definitely prep yourself on timing because it’s such a fantastic location many others will want to be out there too.