Well, at least
I'd never known about it before.
I read about Yerba Buena Road on the
Mulholland Raceway website and the
Pashnit.com motorcycle website. Today, I decided to give it a try before work.
Yerba Buena starts out at the Pacific Coast Highway, right near the Motorcycle/Surfer hangout Neptunes Net. It covers 12 miles, with 188 turns, as you move up from sea level to 2777 feet, where you thread through the Triunfo Pass. Apparently, it's the highest paved road in the Santa Monica Mountains.
The pavement is nice, if a little on the narrow side. At the very top, there's enough up and down so that the car get's light, at times.
There's very little traffic. I saw no bicyclists at all, which is a nice bonus. According to the Pashnit site, the road is never patrolled by the CHP.
It's a second-gear road, for the most part. It's tight like Decker Canyon, but with less traffic. I think it's safer than the stretch of Mulholland Highway that runs parallel to it, since Mulholland is mostly a third-gear road, which is on the fast side for my tastes. If I'm going to slide off the side of a road, I'd rather do it at 50 mph than 80 mph.
Some very nice views, too -- if you're willing to take your eyes off the road.
The one danger is occasional horse traffic, although the one group or horse riders I passed seemed to be paying attention for the sound of cars/motorcycles, and waited in a safe place for me to pass.
I think it might be a good stretch of road to try on a future Mulholland run -- especially if we decided to try starting out at the Pacific Coast Highway, and taking Yerba Buena up, going from there to Mulholland Highway, to Decker Canyon, to Encinal Canyon, etc.
I took some pictures when I was at the top of the pass. (What, you thought I'd leave the camera at home?
)
