Fairfax - Tamalpais Loop

Today my ride will have some decent climbs and starts from Fairfax in the Marin County, which is the County you enter when you cross the Golden Gate Bridge Northbound. According to Wikipedia Fairfax is the only Town in the USA where the Green Party holds a majority in the Town Council.

The Town is small and has a certain charm. From the central Town square I headed up the Fairfax-Bollinas Rd, which will first take me to the Meadow Golf Club, which is very nicely located between Redwoods.

In the back you can see Mount Tamalpais or Mt. Tam for short. You can also see the weather is back to “normal”, which means blue skies and very pleasant temperatures which now will further rise into the weekend.

After a first little peak and descent I arrive at the Alpine Lake Reservoir.

Crossing the dam, now a steady very nice climb in the woods with many, many switchbacks begins.

This climbs brings me to the “main attraction” the Ridgecrest Bvd. 

Why should it be the main attraction of the ride? Well the view on Stinson Beach is really great being some 600-650 m above sea level.

In the far distant one can also see the skyscrapers from San Francisco, which from here above and far away seem like toys.   

After descending and a short climb the view on Marin County with all the homes on the hills is beautiful again.

On the way back to Fairfax I thought I could not do much wrong, just take the first left and go up the valley. Well it was not that simple and I missed the right route several times. So that instead of 15 km I made some 25 km, but who counts. The only thing that bothers me now is that I did not climb up to Mt. Tam (Mount Tamalpais) which with 784 m (starting from 600 m where the road departs) would have been really easy. But as I needed to wait for the fog to clear up I only started my ride in the afternoon and was a bit afraid that it would get too late. Well good reason to come back again.   

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