Monte Cristo/Silver Lake

After work on Friday and buddy from work and I drove up to Monte Cristo trail head and headed the 4 miles toward the old mining town. The hike into the town is mostly flat, gravel and wide. It's pretty simple aside from a few detours where the gravel road had washed out and you meander through the woods on a small dirt trail and one giant log bridge used to cross a river. The log is really long and wide and should be fairly simple for most hikers, but because the rest of the trail is really simple there are lot of young, elderly, inexperienced hikers who attempt this hike and they might get frightened by the task of crossing a fallen tree several feet above cold moving water.

After crossing the river, the rest is pretty smooth sailing until you get into the town. There are several established campsites right outside the town center. This being a Friday night, and as expected, there were quite a few campers occupying these campsites. My buddy and I found a well treed spot since we were using hammocks to do out camping and awaited the arrival of the third member of our party. He got a later start than us and was on his way. He arrived shortly after we did and got our camp all set up for the weekend.

Once we got our campsite situated and everyone's hammocks were just perfect we headed into the town of Monte Cristo to check out the history of the old mining town. There is an old train turnstile that can still be moved, several buildings still standing and AMAZING mountain views. I can see why it was a popular destination; very beautiful.

The next morning we headed up from Monte Cristo to Silver Lake. The hike to Silver Lake is more of a typical hike; narrow, steep and dirt, with spots of awesome views. You reach the lake after 2 miles and 1600 feet of elevation gain, a lot of the elevation gain is toward the very end.

The lake was still partially covered in snow and ice, but beautiful nonetheless. There were a few parties up there that camped overnight. After we spent some time at the lake, and filled up our bottles with water we headed back down the trail. When we got back into town we relaxed a bit and started getting food ready for dinner. We all made up our own Mountain House meals and hung out for a while and gathered firewood for our campfire. We enjoyed a relaxing night around the campfire and then went to sleep in our hammocks.

In the morning we got up and cooked some breakfast and then packed up our campsite. We headed back to the trail head on a cloudy Sunday morning. When we got to the trail head we quickly realized my buddy's truck was MISSING. Someone had stolen his truck! We drove around the area in my truck looking for any signs of it off in a ditch or another parking lot with no luck. We reported it stolen to some park rangers we found at another trail head parking lot. On our way back into town we found it! It was parked on a side road. We talked to some people camping nearby and they witnessed this truck being used to break into other cars along Mountain Loop Highway. There was some minor damage to the truck and we couldn't get it started. We eventually had to get a tow truck to tow it to his house.

The hike, location and camping were tons of fun, but the bummer of my buddy getting his truck stolen was really lame and put a sour taste in our mouth about the whole trip. It's pretty sad how we can't go out and enjoy the wilderness without fearing for our possessions. I hope no one else has to experience this kind of bummer.


Region: Central Cascades, Stevens Pass-West
Distance: Monte Cristo 8 miles/Silver Lake 4 additional miles
Elevation Gain: Monte Cristo 700 ft/Silver Lake 1600 additional ft
Peak Elevation: Monte Cristo 2800 ft/Silver Lake 4350 ft
Difficulty: Monte Cristo Easy/Silver Lake Medium
Pass Requirement: Northwest Forest Pass

As always check out all the photos of the hike and every hike by clicking on the "Photos" tab.