It’s no secret that I love Mount Diablo. I’ve ridden up and down that mountain more times than I can count, on the V-Strom, on the GS, in the Volt and the Rivian, and the destination is always the same. The summit. That’s the whole point, right? I love the technical nature of the road and it never disappoints.
The forecast had been teasing snow on Diablo for a few days and I’d been watching it closely. When the day arrived I loaded up the Rivian. I didn’t want to deal with the GS and the cold, wet weather as well as potential ice on the road. No, no, and no. Creature comforts for the win!
The valley floor was sitting in the mid-40s when I left. As I approached the park, I could see a long backup of cars as one driver decided to not turn out while he was filling out the park payment slip, finding $10 in his wallet, getting it all in order, and depositing it in the drop-off container. Um, there’s parking just to the right for those that need it…. 🤦🏻♂️
The hills embody that deep green that follow a good stretch of rain. Spring was clearly happening down here. But the higher I climbed, the more that changed. The green grass began to take on more yellow hues with pressure from the colder temps higher up the mountain. Temperatures dropped into the mid-30s and the summit was doing exactly what I’d hoped, wearing a clean coat of white with the observatory switching between being masked in low clouds and showing it’s dusting of snow in the clear. The snow line was sharp from the road. Below it: green. Above it: winter, still firmly in charge. Two seasons fighting it out on the same mountain, and I had a front row seat going up. I was shocked on how clear that demarcation line was. I couldn’t help but smile.
And then I got to Juniper Campground.
Hard closure. Cones across the road, park staff directing cars away from the summit road. Someone was just leaving a parking spot as I pulled in, which felt like good luck at the time. I sat there for a few minutes looking out over the vista, running the math. The hike to the summit was four miles round trip. The light was fading. The weather wasn’t improving. And there were a lot of people up here with the same idea I’d had. I wasn’t novel here. With all of that stacked up, the snow at the top wasn’t going to be worth it.
I turned around and headed back down. Mildly bummed. Not catastrophically, but decidedly bummed.
Somewhere in that first mile of descent I figured: I’m up here, the mountain looks like this, I have the truck. It’s easier to stop and haul out camera gear than it ever is with the bike. Why not see something new?
Then I pulled into Oak Knoll Picnic Area. It was a left turn I’d breezed by a number of times before. It’s always just been a thing you pass on the way to somewhere else.
The first thing I noticed getting out of the truck was the quiet. After the noise and the crowd energy at Juniper, Oak Knoll was almost empty. A couple of other cars. Nobody in a hurry. Just the cold air and the view opening up to the west, the valley below going green and gold where the light was breaking through, the summit staying locked in white above. The whole conflict of the day was visible from right here.
I spent about thirty minutes there and I’m glad I did.
There are stone hearths built into the picnic area, hand-laid rock construction that looked old and solid and worth a closer look. I photographed them without really knowing what they were. I looked it up later: Civilian Conservation Corps, 1930s, part of a massive Depression-era push to build out the park infrastructure. That stonework is now a designated Cultural Preserve. I’d been driving past it for years.
The trees kept me busy too. Some of them are massive valley oaks, bare in winter, doing that thing old oaks do where the branches go in every direction like they’ve been growing long enough not to care about symmetry anymore. Others are dead, skeletal grey forms standing in the scrub. The 2013 Morgan Fire burned through significant sections of Diablo, and the foothill pines, apparently called “gasoline trees” for good reason, largely didn’t come back. The oaks mostly survived. The pines mostly didn’t. In black and white, what’s left of them has a quality that’s hard to describe. I just kept shooting.
This quiet B+ spot, as it turned out, was a lot better than the overrun A spot up the road.
The newer Rivian software builds are noticeably more conservative about regenerative braking on long descents than they used to be. I first noticed it coming down Diablo on Memorial Day weekend a few years ago, the truck backing off regen in a way that felt unfamiliar. Reached out to Rivian. They told me it was working as designed, something about protecting the battery above a certain state of charge. Chevy’s Volt didn’t have the same backoff and its battery is considerably smaller than the Rivian’s. If you’ve been driving an R1T for a while and you’re used to strong one-pedal behavior on a long descent, just know the truck has gotten more cautious about it. I’m curious if other owners are seeing the same thing. Let me know in the comments.
Mount Diablo wasn’t giving up the summit that day. Old Man Winter had it and wasn’t in a sharing mood. But Oak Knoll was right there the whole time, thirty feet off the road, quiet and interesting and completely overlooked.
Next time I’m up there, I might stop again!
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