Unknown California Canyon Road

[Jack Olsen]

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? )

[Sonic dB]

another reason why california is unique and special

[Zeke]

Looks like a great road. And, if there was little to no traffic today, you can imagine what it would be like on a weekday morn. How did H. Dean do it? Yeeeaaaahhah (?)

[Hugh R]

Jack

Speaking of Mulholland, I'd like to make a pitch for driving up here in the Santa Clarita Valley. Francisquito Canyon to Green Valley and then Bouquet Canyon back to Valencia is great. No bicycles, no CHP (for the most part). Francisquito Canyon is where the St. Francis Dam blew out in the 1920s or 30s and killed several hundred people, the water from behind the dam washed out past Fillmore to the ocean in Ventura. You can still see HUGE chunks of concrete from when the dam failed. As I said, speaking of Mulholland, old Edward Mullholland himself (the father of the Los Angeles Aqueduct which brings water down from northern California to LA (the movie "China Town") signed off on the dam as being safe the day before it failed.

[maxnine11]

i know that road well. yes, it is rough and very narrow in a couple of spots. Very little traffic.The first few miles off of Mulholland is nice (it is called Little Sycamore IIRC) and is part of LA county. As soon as you hit the Ventura County line it is calle Yerba Buena, and the pavement worsens.
I did a drive from the PCH all the way up Yerba Buena once, just crossed the county line before Mulholland and got stopped by the police....they had the road ribboned off. Though there maybe had been a crash...but the officer said they had found a murder victim! so, it was all of the way back down to PCH the long way!! oh well....I was in a Porsche

max

[Jack Olsen]

Hugh, that drive sounds interesting. (Or at least interesting to me, since a friend of mine is trying to set up a movie about Mulholland's life.) Southern California has too much good weather, and too many great roads for 911's.

Milt and I are looking at a Mt. Baldy route next weekend. We should all definitely do a Bouquet-Cyn/Spunky-Cyn/St.-Francisquito-Cyn run, at some point in the future. I think Ryan is also working on the next Big Bear Run, now that his SC can reach warp speed in a heartbeat.

Maybe we just need to form a Pelican-SoCal-Ride-of-the-Month Club, and move from canyon to canyon.

[Matt Holcomb]

Jack,

You've got the perfect car for Yerba Buena Road. How about a Yerba Buena highlights clip? I'd love to drive it vicariously!

[moazam]

Jack, with all the racing you do, how in Lords name do you keep the paint on your car so perfect?

Or do you wash it by the road side before you take the pictures?

[Jack Olsen]

Originally posted by moazam
Jack, with all the racing you do, how in Lords name do you keep the paint on your car so perfect?

That's nice of you to say. But if you saw the car in person, you'd learn that the secret to keeping your paint looking great is...

...digital photography (especially with a fairly out-of-date digital camera). The digital images work wonders at making paint look clean and bright.

Up close, the car shows all of its battle scars. There are hundreds and hundreds of paint chips, and some really deep gouges in the fiberglass.

Even in these pictures, you can see that the front spoiler and leading edge of the rear flares are pretty grungy.

A hazy day also hides dirt well. I took the car out this morning, and left it parked in the driveway by the outlet from our clothes dryer. When I came out to go to Malibu, there was a nice layer of lint dust all over it. My thinking? 'Oh, well. If I take any pictures, I'll step back fifteen or twenty feet.'

All that said, the paint job that KevinP73 did on it last year was awesome, and the quality of that original paintwork does a good job of distracting the eye from the minefields of more-recent stone chips.

[surflvr911sc]

That road looks awesome, I’m in!

I’m having a tough time deciding on when to have the next Big Bear Run, this time of year anything can happen w/ the weather up there but I don’t want to wait ‘til summer. We should of had it planned for next weekend. Any suggestions?

[surflvr911sc]

I hope you don’t mind posting a less flattering picture of your car Jack.

This was WSIR, right after a Vette went off and through up a ton of gravel at BBII. My wife got the e-ticket in the passenger seat for that one.



BBII still looks great though. I can’t believe Jack can be so nonchalant about his baby getting beaten up. I guess “been there, done that” goes a long way in the attitude department.

[dd74]

Originally posted by surflvr911sc
That road looks awesome, I’m in!

I’m having a tough time deciding on when to have the next Big Bear Run, this time of year anything can happen w/ the weather up there but I don’t want to wait ‘til summer. We should of had it planned for next weekend. Any suggestions?

I don't know, I thought it was pretty cool (no pun intended), having that run in the dead of summer. Sure proved my motor will stay together in the heat.

[Jack Olsen]

Originally posted by surflvr911sc
I guess “been there, done that” goes a long way in the attitude department.

It's true. A broken headlight and some rock chips is pretty easy, compared to one of those really bad days:





And if you look at the pictures from today at higher resolution, you can see more of the car's "beauty marks."

[bell]

jack.....looing at that pic of bb1 it looks as if the strut brack actually kept the right side from collapsing and twisting more than it did, but i'm no engineer

[old_skul]

Just once - just once - I want to come to LA and rent a Porsche. Even a Boxster would do. Every time I'm out there I try to get something vaguely sporty from the rental place (last time was a Mustang ragtop) and run those canyon roads. It's a lot of fun.

You guys are so lucky. But then Ohio has its share of good roads, too - out in the southeastern area of the state. The guys from Car & Driver and the rest of the auto rags tend to go down there from Detroit to rag out their review units.

[Jess]

Jack,

You mentioned a furture Mt. Baldy run, let me offer a suggestion.

Take Mt. Baldy Road to just before the village and turn left (a sharp hairpin) onto Glendora Ridge (or Mountian) Road. Glendora Ridge is a great twisty road that will take you over to Azusa Canyon and Angelus Crest Highway.

I grew up in Claremont and this was our usual High School racing circuit.

When I think back on it, it's surprising none of my friends are dead! We used to do this in Rabbits and Sciroccos in the early 80's.

Jess

[mjshira]

Jack,

everytime you guys post about those Cali drives it makes me want to move back. I grew up in Alameda (home of Rgruppe founder Cris H.) and used to love to take my Datsun 2000 roadster and hit the hills above Oakland.

sitting here at the office looking out my window down Madison ave and 42nd street it all seems a long time ago. But I think I'll fire up my rgruppe 69 911 and see what kinda curves I can find upstate NY today.

Keep them posts coming! They always make my day

James

[Zeke]

Originally posted by Jess
Jack,

You mentioned a furture Mt. Baldy run, let me offer a suggestion.

Take Mt. Baldy Road to just before the village and turn left (a sharp hairpin) onto Glendora Ridge (or Mountian) Road. Glendora Ridge is a great twisty road that will take you over to Azusa Canyon and Angelus Crest Highway.



Jess

This is the area being scouted. The thing about some of this area is the sheer distance. You take the long route all the way to ACH and you're gonna be a long way from home and tired. Those Santa Monica routes are a nice workout, but short enough to leave you wanting more. Up around Baldy, I got to the point of just cruising and enjoying a leasurely drive. I was able to satisfy my jones for fast driving after the first half hour. I still had to come down and go home. We'll try to pick a complete route that doesn't back track and is doable in a decent time frame.

[techweenie]

Jack, let me recommend a road I drove with the So Cal Boxster Group. It's called Deer Creek. It's a few miles over the Ventura county line and "Ts" into Yerba Buena. For its short run, it is a rollercoaster fun ride like no other I've ever found. Only issue is that it is 1-1/2 cars wide for the most part.

It'll take hours to get the grin off your face!

[Emission]

Pretty cool road - done it many times.

The only downside is after one of our 'Winter Storms" - that road tends to get a bit of rock and gravel falling on it. Wait a few days, and the infrequent traffic grinds it to dust.