Silver Star is a great destination. Even though it doesn’t seem to be too high, it certainly can give you that sense of reaching a high summit. Part of it might be due to the surroundings but more than that, I think it’s the views you can get from the top… when weather permits that is. In the past I’ve done several hikes in the area and covered most of the trails on the north side of the mountain that offer different challenges ranging from distance, elevation gain and really bad roads. I had also done a couple of trail on the west side of the mountain but never reaching the summit so there was a bit of room for exploration there. One trail that was on my mind was the Grouse Vista. The reason I had not done it was because going up and coming back down the same route was not enough of a hike to compensate for the drive. Looking at the map and knowing there are several approaches to Silver Star, I started looking at how to extend this trial and maybe do a loop. One option was combine this with the Sturgeon trail which I haven’t done either for pretty much the same reason. The other possibility was another trail further north that, as the Sturgeon trail, descend to the Tarbell trail which ends at the Grouse Vista trail. With these two possible options, I had a plan. So I headed off with a small group of hikers and bad weather to Silver Star. The hike was great, the views weren’t. In fact, there were barely any views. On our way we were barely able to see a glimpse of Pyramid rock, a rock formation that invites you to climb it. Further up, the wind, the snow and the low lying clouds blocked everything to the point that from the summit, you couldn’t see the saddle right below it. I’m not going to say I didn’t like the hike, Silver Star is always great and we got a very descent amount of exercise out of this one. I was able to only take a handful of pictures that you can see bellow. In the future I might revisit this with good weather and get the pictures though.
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