This weekend was looking rainy, so we figured we should try Silver Peak early in the morning before work! 5 days ago, the road apparently wasn’t super driveable (someone walked 2 miles on the road because of one snowy spot early on). But the road was PERFECT today! Any high clearance vehicle should be able to make it to about where the snow starts 100%.
There was one snow patch about 50 yards away from where the snow starts, which required using my rear locker and several attempts to get through, but then we parked exactly at the start of 100% snow coverage, no walk at all, which was pretty sweet!
We left home at 3:10 AM, and started skinning on the foggy snow covered road at 4:30 AM (the drive is significantly less time than Google Maps says).
The skin along the road was pretty brief, and then the path cuts into the sparse uneventful forest for a while.
There’s one spot you have to find the right way up the ridge through some denser trees, but it’s only about 10 yards of slightly dense trees, usually our ski tours include hours of dense nastiness!
After that, the path easily continues up, with a couple steep hills which we had to put ski crampons on for since it was still so early and a bit icy.
The snow easily continues to the ridge where you can get a view of the other side, and normally ski runs toward Annette Lake, but there wasn’t much snow on the other side anymore. Beautiful views!
If you wanted to continue to the summit, you’d have to scramble on the rocks for a bit, but seems pretty easily doable.
The clouds made for some awesome views!
The runs down to Annette Lake seemed all melted out by now…
The way down was pretty awesome! About 30 mins to the car taking our time. Up top, where the sun was hitting the snow, it was actually pleasantly soft and made for a few perfect turns! Then there was a bit of icier sections, but then lower elevations warmed up again. There was a bit of sun cupping, but not terrible. Honestly this was one of the best ski tours we’ve done all winter, ironically in June! There was about 3 minutes of having to push on slight flat/uphill ground, and that one 10 yards of dense forest, otherwise no nonsense!
