Silverdaisy Mountain Trail

A look down the Skagit Valley from the Silverdaisy Mtn trail at dawn

Wanting to keep taking advantage of the nice weather we were having earlier this week, I decided to get up at 5am on Tuesday to drive out to Manning Park and check out the Silverdaisy Mtn trail to see if I could find any interesting photo opportunities.



The Silverdaisy Mountain trail is in a unique spot in southern British Columbia. Though you drive into Manning Park and park at the Sumallo Grove picnic area, as soon as you leave the parking lot and cross the foot bridge across the Skagit river you leave Manning Park and enter Skagit Valley Provincial Park. Then, after fifteen minutes of walking along the valley floor on the Skagit River trail you swing off onto the Silverdaisy trail where you leave the park and enter a rare pocket of non-park land, locked in between the two parks. The climb up gives you clues to it's non-park status as you see the remnants of mining operations from years gone by. The trail actually parallels an old tram line that used to service the Silverdaisy mine. The trail rises quite quickly, switchback back and forth out of the valley floor and after just over an hour of hiking up the mountain in the pre-dawn light, I came to an old rock slide that gave a great view down the Skagit Valley. I settled on spending some time shooting around there - between the valley overview and some of the smaller details, it was an interesting little spot.

I decided to call it a day from there and descend back down to my truck. One day, I'll do the whole trail but with a listed return trip time of 9 hours I'll leave it for another time. Here's a few of my favorite shots...

After leaving the parking lot you cross this foot bridge across the Skagit river.

It's a pretty well engineered bridge for a hiking path.

As soon as you cross the bride you leave Manning Park and enter Skagit Valley park.

After 15 minutes on the Skagit trail, you leave your second park of the day and head off into no-man's land.

Since the trail isn't in either of the two surrounding parks, the trail isn't exactly maintained to the most rigorous standards.

I'm not sure how old this sign is but I never saw any signs of anyone working. Maybe farther down the trail than I traveled.

This rockslide after about an hour of hiking seemed like a good place to stop and take a few photos.

The rockslide affords a great place to get a view down the Skagit valley. The trail I started on traverses down this valley floor.

Closeup moss photo.

Found this interesting moss formation on these rocks.

Along the trail you see the remnants of previous mining operations.