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Clint and I tried to make plans to do a bit of hiking in the cottonwoods this weekend but due to the current snow levels we decided to try something that has been sitting on my ‘to do’ list for the last few months. We met at the parking lot at the base of Park City Mountain Resort and purchased an $11 scenic lift ticket to save a bit of hiking time, after the long ride we made a short hike over to the area of the Silver King mine.

The first building we encountered was welded and chained shut but after a bit of looking around we found a way inside. Entering this building is a VERY bad idea .. rotting wood floors, collapsed ceilings, rusty nails, broken glass, displaced objects, and mine shafts makes this a dangerous place. We carefully picked our though the Silver King taking a our photos.

We exited the building and started hiking up the mountain toward our next destination under dark skies, rolling thunder and a bit of rain. We followed the route I had mapped out on my GPS and three miles later we arrived at the Thaynes Canyon Mine when the rain really started to come down. We found our way in (also a bad idea for reasons listed above) and started taking our photos.

When the rain let up we hiked up Thaynes Canyon a bit further to see the collapsed California Comstock mine. This site looked as if it could topple over at any moment.

The thunder was still rolling as we headed back down to the Thaynes mine. We hiked up the tailings pile and took shelter under the large convayer belts as the rain came down again. Twenty minutes later we were shooting our last photos of this site before we headed back towards the Sliver King.

The largest building in the Sliver King complex was very impressive, It has at least 8 levels and was constructed on a very steep hill. The lower levels are a tetanus shot waiting to happen with tons of debris form collapsed ceilings and pieces of broken equipment littered across the floors. I didn’t not take of shots of the outside to due rain but we spent a fair amount of time exploring the inside.

Here is a photo of this building in 1902.

Ground level

We made it back to the top of the lift at 4:30pm the track log in the GPS registered 6.88 miles. Not a bad little outing for a rainy Sunday afternoon.