Silvercloud Mine Hike & Nighttime Geocaching

Silverton, Colorado
Kendall - National Forest CG


On one of our last days in Silverton we wanted to hike up to the old Silvercloud Mine. There is a geocache hidden up there.  It sits at 11,440 feet elevation. Should be a great hike with all the fall color. 

A muskrat swimming in a pond along the way.

 

You could actually drive up to the mine if you had a short wheel base 4x4 vehicle.  The road starts out ok, but soon turns into a jeep road.  We're glad we didn't take our huge truck up there.

Bridal Peak and Three Needles surround the area.

 

Old foundation and some pretty wildflowers.

Almost there.  Lots of switchbacks.

 

Famous view looking back down at the sharp curve in the road.

 

Made it to the mine opening.

Silvercloud Mine.

It was all closed up and locked but I was able to get a picture inside through a crack in the door.

Old track leading over the mountain side.

Looking up at the peak.

Beautiful views of the peaks across the valley.

Made it!

 

We didn't get any pictures of the cache itself, but it was pretty cool and had a nice jeep trackable in it.

Very steep mountainsides.

A small waterfall running across the road.

Back down.

 

We headed to Ouray for some ice cream and coffee.  There are many switchbacks on this road.

Love the colors in the Red Mountains.

Lot's of old ghost towns and buildings.

Ouray.

 

It was getting late when we drove back to Silverton, but there were a couple caches we wanted to get that we couldn't find a few days ago.  We messaged the owner and he visited and re-hid them as they had been taken.  By time we got to the last cache, it was getting dark.  It was a two-part hide and Steve was insistent on finding it.  We thought it was just off the dirt road so we only pulled the truck off to the side and started our hike up the mountain with flashlights. The first part was hidden near the Shrine, the hint to find the second cache was "It's easy being close to Heaven".

Look where we ended up.  Using our flashlights, behind a pine tree was a large sign in the ground, "Heaven, USA".  Pretty cool cache!  When we got back down to the truck there was a Sherriff waiting for us wanting to know what we were doing out with flashlights.  We thought it might sound funny trying to describe Geocaching to him, but he knew what it was and was aware of where it was hidden.