[locoyokel]

Lots of people call Bishop and Mammoth "socal", but they're north of Santa Cruz so this is going in norcal!

Silver Canyon in the Whites, east of Bishop, is a heinous, brutal 6400' climb that tends to overheat 4x4s. The ridge top is 10,500'. As an up ride, it's actually not too bad of a surface, but down is a bit ugly - it tends to be very steep and kind of gravelly-slick, and there's also a fair bit of 4x4 traffic on the weekends. It was the original Kamikaze ride back in the day.

But - and here's the trick - there is the original Silver Canyon road, now more of a trail, which is a fun downhill. Especially if you cheat and get a car shuttle! Sunday was the 4th or 5th time I've ridden it, and the first time I lucked out and only rode a few hundred feet of uphill for the 6000'+ descent. The old road drops 4000' in 7 miles, then joins the modern road.

Warning - this is loose, steep, and remote. Only for folks who are used to loose desert surfaces!

I started at the Schulman Grove (end of the pavement) while everyone else hiked, so there was only 2.5 miles of rolling terrain (total climbing of about 500') to get to the top. The elevation is 10,100-10,500'. The start of the dirt:

Looking north about a mile before Silver Canyon. The peaks are not White Mtn, although you can just barely see it (it looks like a tiny shoulder on the left side of the center peak, with a cloud behind it):

Turned left on the well-marked Silver Canyon road, and rode to the overlook (50 yds down the other side). Turned back around and rode to the top - this is the view you'd get if you rode up the Silver Canyon road to the very top. The old Silver Canyon road goes left on the old track past the No Motor Vehicles sign. This old road has been closed for decades to motorized traffic but is definitely legal for bikes (the recent Wilderness additions did not close it). A few motorcycles use it illegally now and then - just a single one since the winter.

The very top:

Heading down - you can see the old road ahead. Lots of sections of this road have handmade rock walls, and there's an old bridge near the top and an old cabin.

A bit further down - the road is long overgrown and it's pretty single-track in sections:

The old road (steep!), with Bishop in the distance. The high peak is Mt. Humphreys:

The modern Silver Canyon road is on the next major ridge to the south:

Some rock surface here and there:

Turning north towards the canyon bottom:

Looking back at the "road" - definitely not double track anymore!

The main canyon ahead:

Nothing even approximating a solid tacky surface! Steep drop offs too:

Finally hit the wash - and time to kick out of techy-loose and into big rocks and gravel:

Heading down the canyon bottom - rocks, soft gravel, and tricky to find the best route:

Some faster sections:

When you hit the main road you can really fly, but watch out for the creek crossings!

Nearing the canyon mouth - Laws is straight ahead:

Hopefully you get picked up in Laws, I rode in the heat (not too bad) to a friends place across Bishop and waited a while before the hikers got back down! If you do this as an out and back up Silver Canyon, get started EARLY. I got going a couple times around 7 and would have done a lot better to start at 5 or even earlier. Of course if you're really hard core, you ride up Silver, north along the crest, up White Mtn (14,246'), and then back, for a total of 60 miles or more and around 12000' of climbing (over 10,000' even if there were no up & down along the crest!). Fun stuff!

 

[Zignzag]

Nice pics

I rode down it last summer -- one of my favorite downhill runs ever. I loved the last mile or so riding down the dry river bed without a trail, just improvising. Cacti were growing on the trail, so I guess it isn't ridden much.

We didn't cheat, though. We rode/pushed our bikes to the top of White Mt. first. Started and finished the ride in the dark.

 

[Diesel~]

Great pix and writeup...thanks.

-D

 

[n8rhino]

That is so ironic! I climbed Silver Canyon Monday morning starting at 9:30AM. I wish I had a camera to do my own photo document, next time I guess? I was doing my own recon of the climb to plan for a full length climb to White mtn. sometime in Aug.? That last 4 miles to the top of the ridge is a brute! I probably walked 2 of the 4 miles? I saw 1 set of tire tracks on the way up and saw 1 rider climbing up from the bottom around 12:30? Ride time up was 2:45, ride time down was 30 minutes!

 

[Zignzag]

That is so ironic! I climbed Silver Canyon Monday morning starting at 9:30AM. I wish I had a camera to do my own photo document, next time I guess? I was doing my own recon of the climb to plan for a full length climb to White mtn. sometime in Aug.? That last 4 miles to the top of the ridge is a brute! I probably walked 2 of the 4 miles? I saw 1 set of tire tracks on the way up and saw 1 rider climbing up from the bottom around 12:30? Ride time up was 2:45, ride time down was 30 minutes!

2:45 is fast! Did you ride down the trail? It's hard to find.

Some pics from last summer...

 

[slide mon]

Hey

Thanks a lot for the pics and info. I'm planning on riding White Mountain later this summer (starting from the gate past the second bristlecone grove, that's enough punishment for me.) A 6000' descent tacked on to the end should make it easier to find a couple of people to tag along :thumbsup:

Did you get dropped off at the top or did you have to go back to pick up your car? Do you know how long the round trip is to retrieve the car shuttle?

-slide

 

[Zignzag]

Hey

Thanks a lot for the pics and info. I'm planning on riding White Mountain later this summer (starting from the gate past the second bristlecone grove, that's enough punishment for me.) A 6000' descent tacked on to the end should make it easier to find a couple of people to tag along :thumbsup:

Did you get dropped off at the top or did you have to go back to pick up your car? Do you know how long the round trip is to retrieve the car shuttle?

-slide

We rode the whole way, starting at 4:30 AM from the bottom of Silver Canyon near Laws. We had a support truck that accompanied us up to the gate before the Barcroft Laboratory.

We cooked up some breakfast at the top of the Silver Canyon climb.

 

[lil' kid]

Awesome, my hubby is working in Bishop the next couple years, we'll check this out!

 

[n8rhino]

No, I rode up "New" Silver Canyon and back down. I was by myself and just wanted to get an idea of what to expect doing the whole ride to White mtn. and back. It just didn't seem too smart to go exploring by myself and I get a little spooked with large thunderheads roll in at 10,000 feet. So I just got my head cleared from the climb and came back down. My wife and a few friends are planning on meeting me around Schulmann grove in Aug and go to the top. There much smarter than me and choose not to climb silver canyon.

 

[erisch]

cool stuff,

is the trail you rode the one which is visible here:
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=37.409505,-118.207655&spn=0.028191,0.041628&t=h&z=15

(the one which is clearly visible to the south of Silver canyon Rd)

Thanks
Erik

 

[locoyokel]

2016 EDIT: sometime in the past 7 years Google has corrected their map, so it now shows the modern Silver Canyon road correctly, and the old road is not labelled.

2009 post below for context, now incorrect:
----------------
Nope, the one to the south is the modern Silver Canyon road. The old one is the one labeled on Google Maps as the Silver Canyon road.

National geographic TOPO! map has it wrong as well (shows the old one as the open road).

 

[erisch]

thanks, I already suspected something like this because the unmarked trail/road looks much wider.

 

[Fairfaxian]

Thanks for the beta

Thanks Loco, your ride beta & pix are really what I look for on a mtb forum. And the pix remind me that "adventure riding" is exactly why I bought my first mtb -almost 25 yrs ago.:thumbsup:

 

[NorKal]

Very cool, looks very remote and awesome. I had to look at a map and gosh darn if Bishop isn't North of Santa Cruz although I think once you're south of Lake Tahoe you really need to turn the ruler 90 degrees to the CA/Nevada border to determine Where Norcal/Socal splits. I say everything south of King City which puts Mammoth/Bishop in SoCal

 

[Zignzag]

I think this is it.

 

[n8rhino]

I getting fired up to go back and try to climb the whole thing before Aug now! I need to call the Bishop ranger station to find out snow conditions at the top?

 

[locoyokel]

Yep, the red arrow is right.

For White Mountain itself - the road is currently blocked by snow near the Patriarch Grove (several miles before the gate), so calling is a good idea if you plan on it before late June or early July (should be melted out by then).

 

[Zignzag]

Do you know anything about the Black Canyon Trail? On the map it looks like it might be a good downhill run.

 

[n8rhino]

I bought "100 best trails in the eastern sierras" By Hemmingway-Douglass. It has a lot of great descriptions of rides throughout the area. The Black mtn ride sounds a little less demanding but fun?

 

[locoyokel]

There's Black Mountain - various dirt roads (very good surfaces for the eastside) along ridges out to a mine on the ridge east of Black Mountain. Relatively mellow, but it can get pretty warm.

There's also Black Canyon, which has a couple ways to access the canyon at the top. This one is easier than Silver Canyon since the road is wider, not as steep, and in the canyon bottom, but it's also generally just rough & loose for a long while and tends to be overgrown at a couple spots. Also you come out in the middle of nowhere - it's only easy to access (for a car shuttle pickup) from Warm Springs road.

The two entrances are an old road from the flat near the Schulman Grove and an old mining trail from north of the Grandview campground. The upper (Schulman) entrance used to be off-limits to bikes unless you pick them up and walk across the flat (if I remember that correctly). I did that a long time ago, but it gets overgrown, and then the main road climbs a sandy road to the west for a while, then you have to pick the right roads to get back to the canyon at the correct spot (there's no road for a while in the bottom of the canyon). The better entrance is an old traversing mining trail which starts from the notch about half a mile after the Grandview campground, it's a bit tricky to find the top - go down and take the first road/track to the right. It looks like it stops in about 50-100 yds, but go past the first few trees and look for a single track trail (gets some motorcycle traffic). This leads to Black Canyon, and it's all downhill. Some loose sections on rocks right before you hit the old mine and the more traveled road. The old mine is pretty stable (for old mines) and it's a popular place to bring a flashlight and hope there's no cave-in...