Silver Creek - Mineral City — Sunday, Jun. 30, 2024

We had hiked to Silver Lake from Barlow Pass the prior day and thought we'd take a run at getting to Silver Lake from the Mount Index Side. We didn't succeed and enjoyed the attempt. We parked about .3 from the gate as the road beyond was full of deep hills and valleys. The Index-Galena road is quite a piece of work... seemed like the quality of a national park road! 

The first 4 or so miles of trail is an easy grade and included beautiful views of Silver Creek. There are 2 particularly steep gully crossings that have detours down steep slopes which is how we decided to cross. The alternative is a zip line on one crossing and a little basket cable line on another crossing. Before getting to Mineral City we crossed a creek requiring us to take off boots and wade, which was very manageable as it wasn't too wide and knee deep. The second crossing had a old log bridge but no handrails. I decided to try and wade instead as the height of the log crossing spooked me. The water was way to cold for me and the distance quite far across to make a shoe-less crossing and we made that our turn around point. We will come back with water shoes or more courage next time. Our mileage for the day was 9.3. 

There has been some good trail work in that area... lots of weedwhacking, which is much appreicated and made an otherwise faint trail more apparent.  Look forward to tagging Silver Lake from that approach next time and a through-hike would be very gratifying and seems do-able at this time of year. 

Enjoyed hearing Varied Thrush, Hermit or Swainson's Thrush, Stellar Jay, Pacific Wren, Warbling Vireo, and Wilson's Warbler.