Alright, so I decided to give the truck a chance to see what it can do to make a change from taking the car out. Thought I'd try a bit of off roading. Now, the fires have closed most places either because of what's going on or the danger of starting a fire. Other places warned of there being too many people at Thanksgiving and that they would turn folks away. So, I searched and found some sites that do off road trails. Now, first thing I'm going to say is that these sites are totally full of misinformation. It's actually crazy how bad the information is. Right, so let's start at the beginning. Figured I'd head south to Monterrey area and stay there. Worst case scenario I could take William to the Acquarium. There were two trails listed. First was designated as easy. Second as moderate. The easy one had a lot of conflicting information including that the trail was on private land. The second one seemed more legit so headed there. Nope - it's private land. Was supposed to be a loop trail from highway 1 up into the mountains and back round again. We started at the northern most part and you can't drive anywhere on it given the gate and warning signs. Then headed to the southern part of it and first found the road Nacimiento-Fergusson Road. This is a fairly normal small road that's paved. There are a few rock falls on it, but nothing to worry about. There was a review that someone had posted of having done the drive in a car. Well, they may have done that part of the drive in a car, but not the trail. The target is the coast ridge road which, as the name suggests, is a trail that runs the ridge of the mountain. We headed north to start with which is where the trail sites say to drive and you can get 5-10 miles up it and then you reach a trail head for hiking. The trail head is blocked with posts to prevent vehicles from going further. Someone had noted this in their review, but I hadn't read that one. Anyway, that's a fun drive into the mountain with great scenery, but you kind of feel annoyed that it's a there and back as opposed to driving a loop. Once back to the Nacimiento-Fergusson Road, decided to try the South Coast Ridge Road (as opposed to North). This works great and the map below shows a loop that works (obviously completing the loop on highway 1. Highlighted is just the off road bit.
Double click to see in Google Maps
Couple of additional notes. There's a bit that looks like it cuts through from the Coast Ridge Road to Plaskett. It does, but it goes through private land and you will hit a gate and have to reverse up and turn around. Interestingly, at time of writing, the white squarish bits inside the green of the forest represent the private land and you can see where you get stopped. It's annoyingly for just a small bit, but I guess they don't want folks driving through.
I wish I'd taken photos as the views are great, albeit that we were in clouds for a lot of it, but we also had some amazing views. The issue was really not knowing where I was going and if we could get out at the other end, it seemed to make sense to just press forward.
I didn't track where we went, but looking at the map, it seems like the North Coast Road goes higher to about 3900 ft at the furthest point you can drive. The South Coast Road seems to go to 3200 feet in places and it looks like you're generally going up and down 500 feet as you drive along. The drive itself isn't that difficult. There's a couple of spots where you need the four wheel drive and ground clearance to get over rocks, but the majority of it is relatively easy going.
Interesting sign as you get onto the road telling you that you need 4WD and a note that AWD is not 4WD. Would be interesting to see someone go up in their car. As I said, you'd actually get up most places, but you'd end up beached in others.
