The highest point on the road (6,805 ft or 2,074 m) is just north of Black Butte and about 4 miles (6.4 km) NW of Copper City.

It is roughly 35 miles (56 km) along the unpaved road to Alder Springs, which is inside the Mendocino National Forest in Glenn County.

Alder Springs is the location of the Alder Springs GASB site, which is part of the Consolidated Reporting of Earthquakes and Tsunamis (CREST) network run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the United States Geological Survey (USGS), and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

The track of SR 162 turns right and follows State Route 45 south for 4 miles (6.4 km) along the bank of the Sacramento River to Codora.

Travelling east, SR 162 passes the Thermalito Afterbay and the Oroville Municipal Airport,[2] before crossing the Feather River on the Randy Jennings Memorial Bridge.

Olive Highway goes east 7+1⁄4 miles (11.7 km) to Kelly Ridge Road where it turns north and crosses Lake Oroville over the Bidwell Bar Bridge.

SR 162 ends along the Oroville-Quincy Highway at Foreman Creek Road along the eastern edge of the Lake Oroville National Recreation Area.

It breaks off from SR 162 at Wally B Lane running parallel to the highway for a mile or so before reconnecting at Kelly Ridge Road.

In the late 1930s, there was a temporary routing of Alternate US 40 that ran from Davis through Yuba City to Oroville thence to Quincy along Oroville-Quincy Highway, and Bucks Lake Road.

[7] Except where prefixed with a letter, postmiles were measured on the road as it was in 1964, based on the alignment that existed at the time, and do not necessarily reflect current mileage.