Sunday, October 24, 2021

Wright or Rong

It was supposed to rain yesterday, with the sprinkles starting just before lunch time and continuing on into the afternoon. So, with that in mind, I decided to set out early in the morning on Gregg and ride around a little, with two goals in mind.

First, I wanted to check out a piece of Monterey Road between Bernal and Metcalf, roughly this section here. The reason for this is that I wanted to ride my bike up Metcalf road, which I have done once before, but rather than approaching from the south via Bailey and Malech, I wanted to approach from the north, and Monterey Road is the only option there.

While the road didn't look remarkably pleasant to ride on, it did at least have a reasonable shoulder and so in my estimation it shouldn't be a complete deathtrap.

The other thing I wanted to do was finally check out Wright's Station. It's basically a ghost town up in the Santa Cruz mountains that originally hosted a rail line that emerged there from a tunnel under the hills.

I'm not entirely sure where the other end of the tunnel is, but I think this might be it.

Now I say I wanted to see Wright's Station, but what I actually wanted to do was to see if Cathermola Road was completely gated off or not. The answer is that yes, it is completely gated off, with an 8 foot fence topped with razor wire. There's apparently some unfriendly neighbours up there.

Anyway, I was actually a bit mixed up on where exactly the Wright's Station tunnel was and assumed it was behind one of the razor wire fences. Looking back at the maps now I'm realizing it was actually only over a bit of barbed wire, so I could probably go back and actually check it out at some point. I did at least get to see the old bridge with its iron railings.

I just have to hope I don't get haunted by the ghosts of all the Chinese immigrants who died digging it out.

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