Bicycle Mountaineering to Lassen Peak
Bike elevation gain: 1750 ft
Hike distance: 2.5 miles
Hike elevation gain: 1500 ft
Hike time: 6 hrs
Car to car time: 10 hrs
Summit elevation: 10400 ft
After our previous adventure climbing the second tallest peak in Lassen NP, Alex and I decided to come back for the tallest, eponymous peak, Lassen Peak.
By early May, the ~7 mile road from the Visitor Center to the trailhead was plowed, but not yet open to cars. This meant there was a unique opportunity to do a duathlon of sorts; to bike the car-free road and then climb to the top of the peak! I’m calling it “bicycle mountaineering” but I just made that term up.
Biking Up
The night before the climb, we loaded up the car with mountaineering gear and bicycles. We drove to the Lassen Visitor’s Center and slept in the car to get an early start in the morning. Waking up at 5am, we ate some breakfast, got dressed for a day in the mountains, and loaded up the bikes creatively in order to fit snowshoes, avalanche gear, ice axes, and crampons.
We started biking around 6am. The road is a relentless uphill that winds through the forest, past hydrothermal vent areas, and up the sides of the mountains. I quickly found that biking uphill with a load of mountaineering gear was a bit harder than I expected, having to stay in the lowest gear the entire time. But we slowly and steadily continued onwards, with only a few rest stops.
We made it to the trailhead around 8am, having only seen a few park employees and no other visitors. It was a really beautiful and calm bike ride.
The Climb
We took a snack break, then strapped on our snowshoes and loaded up our backpacks for the climb. The winter mountaineering trail approximately follows the summer hiking trail, but with the switchbacks buried under snow, you need to make your own switchbacks or just go straight up.
After 2 or so hours of snowshoeing, we reached steeper terrain and decided to swap the snowshoes for crampons.
We continued steadily uphill with crampons. We crossed over a snowy ridge, then began the final approach to the summit. This part was the steepest, with ice axes definitely required.
We got to the top at 10,400 ft around 1pm, having covered about 8.5 miles and 3250 feet of elevation gain since the morning. My first priority was eating my sandwich and drinking some electrolytes. It was pretty surreal being the only ones on the mountain for the entire day.
Descent
After taking photos, we started heading down. We were able to move a lot faster, both by glissading and also just by walking downhill faster.
With some last views of the mountains, we made it back to our bikes in the parking lot after only about 1.5 hours. We packed the bikes again, and started back down the road. It took us only 19 minutes to roll downhill back to the parking lot (average speed > 20 mph), with barely any pedaling required. Lots of fun!
Fun Strava stuff
