Silver Mountain in the Coso Range
PHOTOS: http://snownymph.smugmug.com/gallery/64 ... 0159_KEFKN
We followed Zdon's directions, but road closure took us to the wrong canyon. TomG figured out we were in Thorndyke Canyon, instead of Lacey Canyon when our route didn't match what was on his map. Thorndyke Canyon was off his map. We climbed up a steep ridge, and tried circumnavigating to avoid dropping back down. We came across other big drops which we couldn't see on the GPS, and took us farther to the east than we expected. This made our 9 mi/2800'gain easy trip into a 15.5 mi/4172'gain day. We got to see Thorndyke Mine, a reservoir with dead snakes and mummified jackrabbits, an old cabin, a live snake, wild horses, and beautiful desert tracked with only hoofprints. Stuff we would have missed if we went a different way. We kept in mind, "a bad day in the mountains is better than a good day at work". We almost passed on making the summit due to time, but when we got closer "summit fever" hit and we summitted just before dark. We headed down the steep west side and turned on the headlamps as we approached the base of the mountain. After walking a flat area for an hour or so, we dropped into Lacey Canyon, and hoped we didn't have to deal with dry falls. We only ran into 2, but were able to climb down. We sent at least 3 SPOT checks to show were we were that didn't go thru due to cloud cover. On the summit 8 hrs after we started, we sent one that went thru (clear skies), which had our SPOT checkers a little concerned and calling each other about the situation. 5.5 hrs later we were back at Thorndyke Canyon. It was a beautiful day and night for hiking, and even though it was long, we kept in mind "a bad day in the mountains is better than a good day at work". And hiking with TomG is always good company!
We had sun, but it was storming in the Sierra
Thorndyke Mine
Reservoir
Mummified jackrabbits inside
Big joshua trees
We have to go down where?
At the bottom, we found an old cabin
Silver Mtn way out there. How'd we get so far east?
Making our way up the wash, beautiful colors
More wild horses!
Finally on the Silver Mountain . . . we should have been back to the vehicles by now, but we saw a lot of cool stuff going the 'long' way.
Coming back on an unknown route (to us) was a little exciting at times
As TomG always says . . . the rest of the world is missing out! I agree! This was an unexpectedly fun trip!
One option is to rent an automatic vehicle to get me there, and do some easy walking. 
