Question about default routes

I have a DSL modem and a LEDE and CeroWrt/OpenWrt router. I can't ping the DSL modem when connected to the "second router". They're hooked up like this:

+---------------+         +---------------+           +-------------+
| Second Router | WAN     | First Router  | WAN       | DSL Modem   |
| 192.168.254.1 | ------- | 192.168.253.1 | --------- | 192.168.1.1 | ------ The Internet
| WAN DHCP is   |     LAN | WAN DHCP is   |       LAN +-------------+
| 192.168.253.5 |         | 192.168.1.2   |
+---------------+         +---------------+                               

When connected to "First Router" (LEDE 17.01.0) via wifi or ethernet, I can ping the DSL modem at 192.168.1.1, as well as connecting to anything on the internet.

When connected to "Second Router" (CeroWrt 3.10.50-1) either way, I connect out to the internet just fine, but ping 192.168.1.1 gives ping: sendto: Operation not permitted

I had thought that the default gateway would handle this. Here is the output from route on both routers. What other information should I provide to diagnose this? Thanks!

#First Router
#root@LEDE:~# route
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
default         192.168.1.1     0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 eth0
192.168.1.0     *               255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 eth0
192.168.253.0   *               255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 br-lan
192.168.254.0   192.168.253.5   255.255.255.0   UG    0      0        0 br-lan
# Second Router
# root@cerowrt:~# route
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
default         192.168.253.1   0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 ge00
172.30.42.0     *               255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 se00
172.30.42.96    *               255.255.255.224 U     0      0        0 sw10
192.168.253.0   *               255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 ge00
192.168.254.0   *               255.255.255.224 U     0      0        0 sw00