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.

Monte Cristo/Silver Lake

This weekend I headed out to the old ghost town of Monte Cristo. (And old town in the mountains that was a mining town and was quite the thriving little place in the late 1800's to early 1900's.) There are plans to close down the town to all visitors for several years for some environmental restoration and cleanup, apparently there is arsenic in the water from all the mines. So I wanted to get up there one more time before they closed it.

So after work on Friday I loaded all my gear in the truck and headed out. I got to the trail head at 5:00 in the evening and I hopped on my bike and rode the 4 miles to the old town. The hike in, or ride in my case, is 4 miles of mostly flat gravel/rocks that was once an old road, but is now closed to all motorized vehicles. It is a very popular activity to ride your bike into Monte Cristo as witnessed by the many bike racks placed all around the campsites and town of Monte Cristo. The trail in is relatively easy however you do have to cross the Sauk River on a log which is quite large and wide so its fairly easy.

I got to the campsite at Monte Cristo just at 6:00 and took claim of the last available campsite. After searching for some suitable trees I set up my hammock and got camp all situated. Then I gathered some tender, kindling and fuel and started a fire in the fire pit. I sat and stared at the fire for a bit, then after that went out I went to sleep.

The next morning I woke up and met my brother and his co-worker at my campsite. (They rode in on bikes that morning.) After they set up their tents and got all situated and we all ate breakfast we set out to hike to Silver Lake.

The old trail to Silver Lake looked to be overgrown and abandoned. The trail sign now points to a different trail which was difficult to locate for us lot. The trail head is hidden behind one of the old buildings but once you walk around the building its easy to locate. The trail climbs steadily and is a mix of dirt, tree roots and rocks. You are amidst the trees almost the whole way apart from one short jaunt where the trees open up and you can see some of the mountains around you. It would have been a spectacular sight, but for us there were low clouds and visibility was severely limited. You climb 1600 feet over the 4 mile hike from Monte Cristo to Silver Lake but the hardest part is the last half mile where you climb almost 500 feet. Its quite steep but luckily its not for very long.

At the top the lake was nice, however by this point visibility was even worse and it started to rain. Clouds were very low and we were getting wet (I was not fully prepared for the rain.) We took a few pictures and filtered some water some the lake. It's best to get your drinking water as high as possible due to the potential of arsenic in the region. Our original plan was to continue on past Silver Lake to Twin Lakes and witness more majestic views. But due to the poor visibility and increasing rain we decided to skip Twin Lakes and head back down. On the way down we stopped at the creek and did some gold panning. There were traces of gold flakes, but we were getting rained on pretty good so we cut that short and headed back to camp.

By the time we got back to camp it stopped raining and started to clear up. We spent some time checking out the old town and looking at the history. Then we made some dinner at camp and then went to sleep. In the morning we woke up and ate breakfast and then packed up camp and biked back to our vehicles. The weather was much better and saw quite a few people heading into Monte Cristo as we were leaving. It was a fun trip but I wish it was a little better weather while we were hiking so we could have gone to Twin Lakes. A lot of cool history, and unfortunately it appears to be closing soon.

Region: Central Cascades, Stevens Pass-West
Distance: Monte Cristo 4 miles/Silver Lake 8 miles
Elevation Gain: Monte Cristo 400 ft/Silver Lake 2000 ft
Peak Elevation: Monte Cristo 2700 ft/Silver Lake 4300 ft
Difficulty: Monte Cristo Easy/Silver Lake Medium
Pass Requirement: Norhtwest Forest Pass
Vegetation: All kinds including ferns, moss, mushrooms, wild berries, sticker bushes, deciduous and conifer trees.
Water Source: You follow Sauk River from the trail head to Monte Cristo. 76 creek flows through the town of Monte Cristo. Silver Lake 8 miles from the road. (All water has the potential of arsenic, get drinking water from as high as possible.)
Wildlife: Lots of birds, frogs, slugs, various insects, chipmunks.

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