Precedent appears to establish a route for combining Square Top Mountain, Argentine Peak, and Mount Wilcox that crosses private property on the Naylor Lake shore (and that is -imho- also suboptimal otherwise). Some have suggested that this trespassing is unavoidable, but reports also indicate that the owners do not react kindly to trespassers. Here I’ll describe 1) a slight variation that avoids trespassing and 2) a more significant variation that would imho be a better choice.

The general idea is to start at the upper Guanella Pass trailhead (for Square Top) and end at the Silver Dollar Lake trailhead; nothing exceeding class 2. With the slog back on Guanella Pass Road, the loop has been described to be ~10-12mi with 4,100-5,000ft elevation gain. That remains the same with the two variations below:

1) Avoid private property by NOT descending all the way to Naylor Lake, and instead do some bushwacking through the forest (after descending some pretty steep slopes; beware not to cliff out). This is the option I took. There was a bunch of deadfall, but the forest is not super dense, also allowing to navigate using the ridgeline to the south as reference (which was good for me, b/c my phone GPS ran out of juice). Without GPS, I ended up hitting the road still within 100 yards of the property boundary… but well out of sight from any of the structures near the lake. (This following report contains a map with indication of the property lines, in addition to a GPS track of the “standard loop”: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=14333 ).

2) But, imho, the following is the better option: From Mt Wilcox, trace your steps back to the saddle with Argentine. From there, take an obvious ramp down towards the valley, heading east, and then turn south to reach Murray Lake (as described in this report: https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=18070 ). From Murray Lake, there is a trail to Silver Lake and then down to the trailhead.

Option 2 requires a short back-track and thus doesn’t make for quite as pleasing of a loop on the map (one reason I didn’t take this option)... but for the actual hiking, it is probably more pleasing: It avoids one of the more unpleasant parts of the “standard loop” of option 1 (down from Wilcox), makes use of an established trail, and adds two alpine lakes.

A remaining not-so-pleasing part of this loop is the slog back up to the Guanella Pass trailhead. Of course this could be avoided with two 2WD vehicles... or with one 4WD vehicle . With the 4WD vehicle, one could start at the upper 4WD trailhead for Silver Dollar Lake instead, and climb Square Top after gaining the Square Top – Argentine saddle from Silver Dollar Lake. With the two 2WD vehicles, one could stash one of them at the lower 2WD trailhead for Silver Dollar Lake (which is just off the Guanella Pass Road).