Current at 11/6/2011 (Online waypoint URL)
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Traditional Cache LKST-7 Lime Kiln by TurdleEggs (2/3) (Archived)
N50° 02.491  W96° 52.752 (WGS84)
UTM  14U   E 651855  N 5545401
Use waypoint: GC1GNH2
Size: Small Small    Hidden on 9/28/2008
In Manitoba, Canada
Difficulty:  2 out of 5   Terrain:  3 out of 5
Available during winter  Ticks  Public restrooms nearby  No Bicycles  No Snowmobiles  Horses  Medium hike (1km-10km) 
   


Winter Friendly

The Lime Kiln is a very nice and relatively unused trail in Birds Hill Park. It can be a tricky path to follow with its more than forty crossings. It's a 7.5 km round trip starting at the Birds Hill Park Ranch parking lot. The trail is wide and flat with a surface of packed dirt in the front and grass covered in the back. The elevation ranges from 265 metres at the trail head to 240 m at the Lime Kiln. This mostly forested path has some nice features along the way including sand pits, earthen mounds and of course the Lime Kiln. There is a warm up shack half way around the trail with a vault toilet. The trail is designated for hiking and horses in summer and cross country skiing in winter. No hiking or dogs are permitted on the groomed cross-country trails in the winter. There are washrooms, a pay phone, restaurant and stables at the trailhead.

The cache is located near the winter warm up shack across from an old Lime Kiln. There are also vault toilets here. The container is a winter friendly dark green 750 ml Lock and Lock hidden off the clearing behind the outhouse in some light bush.

Trail maps:

Birds Hill Provincial Park

Save the following ZIP file containing a GPX track of the trail to load on your GPS:

Lime Kiln Trail GPX file

Additional Hints Hints


Current at 11/6/2011

Found it 5/16/2010 by Kabuthunk
AHA! Ever since I'd read in the various LKST cache descriptions about this mystery 'lime kiln', I've been curious as hell as to what they actually looked like. Due to a distinct lack of time the last time I was at Bird's Hill Park with my wife, I was unable to go after it. Today however... nothing but time. I think it was somewhere in the ballpark of about 2:00pm when I located the nearby 'Half way' cache to the Southwest. I somewhat debated whether to go after any of the other multitude of LKST caches in the vicinity, but pretty much had my heart set entirely on going after the Lime Kiln one specifically today. My theory is that every time I'm at the park, I'll grab maybe one or two of this series... keeps me from not biking very far due to stopping often, as well as making it such that there's generally always something on the North side of the lake (pond?) to go after.

But... after having left the Half way cache, I quickly came across an intersection of the chickadee and... some other trail. Taking the path with the symbol NOT of a bird (not sure if it's part of the lime kiln trail... it was a symbol of basically a rounded hill... could mean ANYTHING), and followed it in the general direction of the kiln. Relatively quickly, I came across another intersection, and ended up taking a wrong turn, figuring the location of the cache somewhat incorrectly. A few seconds of backtracking after looking at my GPS, and I was headed down the right way. After a bit, I saw that the signs for the path I was on at least were OF a kiln (or so I imagine that bricked... structure symbol was... seriously... they need to do more than use clipart from Microsoft Word for these). The arrows on said signs indicated I should be going AWAY from the kiln, so I imagine I was somewhere in the second-half of the circuit. Well... not worrying about that at all. Since I haven't seen a single soul after I left North Drive, I wasn't concerned there'd suddenly be a ton of people I'd have to maneuver around ToungeOut.

However, due the the extremely twistyness of this path, I started to take me further from the kiln again. Since I was about 100 meters away from the cache, I opted to hop onto a fairly well packed animal trail and follow that towards the coordinates (which I could only hope were actually near the kiln... didn't read the description before I headed off). A little bit of trail-following later, and I came upon a clearing with the large shack (the warm-up shack I imagine from the description) with a ton of cut and chopped wood piled against it. Not sure what the purpose of this was at the time, I ignored it and headed towards the information sign in the picture for this cache. A quick reading (quite informative, by the way), and I circled around to look at the kiln.

Man... since like... 3/4 of it is gone over the years, it's very... underwhelming now ToungeOut. So naturally, I climbed down into the kiln. Looking around there a bit, I very quickly discovered that for all intents and purposes, all of the sides of the walls around me where home to a metric ton of ants. Needless to say, I beat a very hasty retreat out of said kiln (still not entirely sure how I managed to hoist myself up one side in one single motion), and decided it was time to look for the cache. A short minute later, I found myself near the coordinates. Leaving my bike pretty much directly on the trail instead of taking it in a few feet like usual (as I said... haven't seen a single other person so far), I wandered towards the coordinates and was quickly rewarded with the geocache BigSmile. A quick chainmail balling and signing later, and I was back on my bike.

Thanks for putting an informative cache out here. Never would have even heard of these lime kilns if it wasn't for this cache series Smile.

Took: Nothing
Left: Logbook entry and chainmail ball


Nearby Caches
GC1VVTP archived Bird's Hill Ant Hill (1.62 kms SE)
GC1GNGM archived LKST-10 Ring (Corral) (1.69 kms S)
GC1Z5N6 archived Half way (1.78 kms SW)
GCW2NY archived Nimowin Asiniy (2.00 kms SE)
GC1X2CW archived LKST-1a Cookout (2.13 kms S)
GC12M42 ROCK HILL (2.16 kms SE)
GC1X2BA archived LKST-1v2 Looking for a Sign (2.17 kms S)
GC1HTTY archived Deer Trail (2.34 kms SE)

Hints (Back)
Hanging from a gnarly oak about waist high