Home » United States » Crater Lake to San Francisco by bicycle

Total distance: 1700 km (1060 mi); total altitude gain: 17 km (12 mi). Tour date: August 1999.

Crater Lake to San Francisco by bicycle

Thomas Driemeyer
2005-10-14 19:58:00

Displayed times (last time: )

Crater Lake

I met with two friends (Wolfram and Robert) in San Francisco, where we took a night train to Klamath Falls. I reserved the seats ahead; on this particular route bicycle reservations are unnecessary but since they use a shuttle bus from San Francisco to the station in Emeryville, we had to ride there and pack the bicycles in boxes they sell. Unlike typical urban commuter trains, the train was modern and clean, with the look of an airplane business class cabin. The seats were not really comfortable enough to sleep well in though.

On arrival in Klamath Falls, we assembled the bicycles and panniers, and rode to the town of Klamath Falls. There is nothing remarkable about Klamath Falls, we only chose it because it was pretty much the only choice for transportation to southern Oregon with bicycles (there are no airports anywhere near for planes large enough to carry bicycles, and Greyhound was unable and unwilling to give any kind of schedule or reservation information and wasn't prepared to accept reservations from Europe. Greyhound is an endless source of horror stories about arrogance and ineptness; now I believe them.)

From Klamath Falls we rode north on highway 97 alongside Klamath Lake, which got rather busy after a while. We turned right at Modoc Point and followed a pleasant little side road until highway 62, which we followed all the way to the Mazama campground below the rim of Crater Lake. The train ride brought us up into the mountains, but we still had about a vertical kilometer to climb that day. We saw Crater Lake the next morning, after another 400 meter climb to cross the rim.

Crater Lake is almost circular with a small island. There used to be a volcano there long ago, but its top blew off and left a very scenic lake. Due to its depth it is incredibly blue. In the summer (we rode in August) ...