Mine Road Trail — Wednesday, Jun. 15, 2016

North Cascades > Mountain Loop Highway

Reading the previous report I decided to try this again and glad I did. I had bad information from another report about this hike and thought that Mine Road went farther than the 0.5 miles from the highway when it does not. Another piece of info that could have helped me last time and may help you is that this trail and the Neiderprum trail are the same trail for the first 1.25 miles and have the same parking spot. No one mentioned this in any report I read!!! For some reason the directions on here for the two hikes are different when they both go to the same starting point and the directions are better when you look at that hikes page. Frustrations aside this was a fabulous hike. You start at the "road closed" sign on the left at the end of Mine Road; the metal gate trail to the right is a climbers trail to Whitehorse or some other spot so avoid it. Go across the old slippery wooden bridge across the creek and as you walk farther you will notice bunches and bunches of trail overgrown with ripe Salmonberry, YUM! After the first rocky, uphill (i use that very lightly) section you'll see a side trail that I followed into the brush and gave up on, not sure what it's supposed to go to but avoid it and keep going straight. Watch out for large puddles, and more overgrown trail. At 1.25 miles Neiderprum trail is on your right so stay straight. A few fallen trees across the trail and more brush but neither is a big deal. At two miles you will see the old mine on your right. Inside the mine is awesome and slightly spooky and WET both on the floor and from drippings above. I wore a hat to shade my headlamp from water. Leave the mine, and walk down to the creek bed and have some lunch. Look up the creek and to the right and you'll see an obstructed yet gorgeous view of Whitehorse. Want an even better view? Follow the rocky path up the creek and over logs to an unobstructed view now of Whitehorse. The best picture is from across the creek but I didn't find a way to get across other than fording it and since getting wet for a picture seemed silly to me I turned around here.