Silver Fish Rd from Hwy39

sshiker · Post by **sshiker** » Fri Apr 12, 2019 9:30 am

Does anybody know who maintains the Silver Fish Road/Trail?

Angeles National Forest website describes the trail as a mountain bike trail.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/angeles ... 6&actid=24

The trail starts at Hwy39 just after the Morris Dam. The trail-old road has really been let go and I wouldn't even think about riding a bike.
It is a beautiful area in the spring with lots of greenery, flowers and flowing streams. After about a mile the trail goes though a bad wash out
that slides down about 100ft to the canyon below. After that the present of poison oaks is more frequent but there are a wide variety of flowers
and a small water fall after about 1.5 miles from start.

I sure would be nice if some group could try to restore this route.

Tom Kenney · Post by **Tom Kenney** » Fri Apr 12, 2019 10:44 am

I read a very extensive trip report re: riding the Silver Fish, but it was from 10+ yrs ago. Looking...will post when I find it. Basic gist was 'overgrown, and likely to stay that way'.

Nice pics!

David R · Post by **David R** » Fri Apr 12, 2019 11:12 am

The easier route is to take a subsidiary E/W ridge straight up which allows access to Silver Mountain. Once you reach the main N/S ridge the remainder of the route is inaccessible down the other side. From the western side near White Saddle, you can go down about a mile or so on deteriorating trail until Stone Cabin Flat and then you end in inaccessible brush. This has been this way as long as I can remember.

Post by **Sean** » Sat Apr 13, 2019 3:02 pm

The road has been deteriorating for awhile now. I don't think anyone is interested in restoring it. People go straight up the ridge now.

I once ran into Sheriff's SAR on an ATV there. They checked out the road but gave up at the slide.

Post by **dima** » Sat Apr 13, 2019 9:38 pm

Is the Fish Canyon drainage accessible from the White Saddle area?

Post by **Taco** » Sat Apr 13, 2019 9:57 pm

A few years back my buddy Jeff and I hiked the road to descend an unexplored canyon nearby. We chopped and crawled our way up the ‘road’ for what felt like hours before reaching the ridge line. Awful. Not recommended. I think I may have been on the road as a little kid with some offroading folks in the early 90’s.

I have no desire to work on the road, even though I’d love to access the land it travels through. A bit of a shame, but the only thing that’ll clear that road is a fire, and I don’t want that.

Gene · Post by **Gene** » Sun Apr 14, 2019 9:12 am

Years ago I took that road to an old trail that dropped into Roberts Canyon. The trail was shown on older US Forest Service maps, but had disappeared long before so I bushwhacked down the slope into Robert's canyon. It took a lot longer than I thought it would and I lost about three years of life when I flushed a couple of quail in the tall brush. They were huge and made a lot of noise. A nice thing about that part of the front country it is seldom visited.