On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
frosty
Here’s another visit where our travel schedule didn’t fit the National Park schedule. The scenic park road goes from 6,700 ft to 8,500 ft elevation and the park gets up to 30 ft of snow, so the road usually doesn’t open for traffic until June. There’s a loophole, though. Anything that’s plowed and passable is open to hikers and bikes. So we unloaded our eBikes and headed up (1,800 ft climb) for about eight miles.
Once we got past the first mile from the Visitor Center we only saw half a dozen hikers and five other bikes. And to be honest, even if we’d been there in summer we might not have done the visit much differently. Other than one nature trail there weren’t any hikes that we were prepared to tackle. So a traffic-free ride at our own pace was just as good or better.
Sulphur Works. Fumaroles, mudpots, and boiling springs, driven by groundwater heated by magma. This picture is one of the mudpots.
We’d climbed quite a distance in the first half hour. When the ranger told us it would all be uphill I told her “That’s why we brought eBikes!”
Mt Lassen
A little farther up we ran into more snow.
The view from the park road
A frozen lake adjacent to the road
Farther up the road, the snow got deeper. This section was probably recently plowed.
Windblown pines
Ms F, coasting downhill on her recumbent trike ahead of me. We had an outfit in Philly electrify it with a Bafang motor and lithium battery. I’ve got a Tern folding bike with the same upgrade.
Results of the Dixie Fire a year earlier in 2021. Whole mountainsides in the Park were burned.
Subsole
Very pretty pictures. The one with the deep snow towering over y’all is wild.
Betty
It does seem that you were there at just the right time to enjoy the beauty while the area was so peaceful.
JPL
The pictures, although beautiful, caused me to become chilled.
BenInNM
Very nice – Lassen is one of the National Parks that has always seemed to be in the background, but I feel I should visit.
OzarkHillbilly
Nice to be able to see it sans the crowds. Something I am always in favor of.
Wag
Very cool trip!
Tenar Arha
Wow! Yay for e-bikes!
UncleEbeneezer
@BenInNM: We went in 2013 but didn’t really give ourselves enough time so we only drove through it. We had our dog Juniper with us so we couldn’t really get out of the car much due to NP regulations on pets. It’s a pretty big park. Just driving through it took us a couple hours. Like Yosemite, it feels like the kind of place you really need at least a couple days to fully explore and enjoy.
TheOtherHank
We did a family trip to Lassen when the boys were young (in the summer time). There are a lot of hikes that are quite doable if there aren’t multiple feet of snow. I really liked hiking to the top of Cinder Cone. The view from the top of the painted dunes is worth the effort climbing what seems like the largest pile of cat litter in the world.
way2blue
What a great idea—to e-bike into the park on a sunny day. When the road is closed to cars. Any sign that the fire-damaged areas are regenerating?
frosty
@way2blue: I expect they will regenerate, but no sign yet, the fire was too recent.
Dan B
@Subsole: Mout Rainier gets more than 80 feet of snow each year. At the parking lot at Paradise the snow is 35 foot vertical walls. I gently nosed my car into the fluffy snow and nearly broke the bumper. The bottom five feet was solid ice.
Damned as Random
@BenInNM: Yellowstone-like without the crowds
StringOnAStick
E bikes for altitude you aren’t used to is a good idea. You can rent pedal assist bikes to ride up Mt Evans in CO, over 14,000′. It’s very crowded with cars in the summer, but after the first fall snow they close the road to cars for the winter, and it often melts off enough of the road to be rideable for a few weeks then.
I rode up Mt Evans once on a mountain bike in my early 50’s, to the summit and saw a lovely flock of ptarmigan halfway to their winter plumage. I tried again 5 months after having both my knees replaced and only got halfway, but I was happy with that. It takes well over a year to fully get your strength back post replacement.
pieceofpeace
These photos convey a peaceful place, clear sailing, a calmness without other people, time to take in the sights and feels. I imagine the silent, blue sky days with a snowscape is the best way to enjoy Lassen in winter. I’ve only been in the summertime, and have meant to return, probably in springtime, before now.