7/24/25
7 miles, there and back, about 1,800 ft of elevation gained
Silver Peak is one of the tallest mountains (1804ft/550m above sea level) on Santa Catalina Island, the third biggest of the Channel islands off the coast of California.
This was a beautiful but definitely difficult hike. I started at Emerald bay, so a couple of feet above sea level. Since the mountain is 1804 ft or 550 m above sea level you gain about 1,800 feet in the span of 3.5 miles. I left with a group that must have been at least a hundred people at around 6pm with the intention of watching the sunset from the peak. Unfortunately when I got up there, there was a giant cloud that covered the peak. As a result the peak was freezing and really wet, and I ended up soaked by the time I left. I stayed up at the peak for about 45 minutes waiting for some friends at the peak, though one didn't make it to the top because they were having some stomach problems. While I would definitely say that the way up was challenging, I feel like the way back down was harder. I tried my best to watch the sunset from the peak but that meant that it was dark out when we went down and there were several long stretches of the trail that were incredibly steep. On the way down I saw several people that had just given up and were scooting down on their butts till it was a bit less steep and after falling twice I really started to debate doing the same. Overall it was definitely a beautiful hike and an enjoyable experience. I particularly enjoyed myself because I got to take a break from dealing with the 22 kids I was in charge of back at camp. It was also nice since I got to talk to two people from our girl's troop outside of a class. Don't get me wrong, there were a couple of decent guys in the boys troop but most of them were super young and I was already close with most of the older girls anyways.
Tragically, when I got back, I found out that one of the older kids who had been causing me the most problems on this trip as well as past ones had disappeared at night, again. There was also other shit going on and it was just generally chaotic so the hike was a really wonderful break from all of the bullshit back at camp
please ignore the dates, at some point the date function stopped working and I didn't notice till I got home.