My apologies for falling more than a month behind in my reporting. Unfortunately, the cause is not too many adventures but that personal stuff will be buried in the postscript. First, we need to talk about a castle in the woods!
Lime Kiln - 7 miles, 625' gain
The trail is a nice stroll through the forest that eventually gets you to an abandoned railroad grade that hugs the canyon wall of the South Fork of the Stillaguamish River. Along the way you get to see the kind of trash that is just old enough to be considered of historic value:
The railroad was built to connect the gold rush town of Monte Cristo to the Puget Sound at Everett. It was a Rockerfeller backed project which committed the ultimate folly and ignored their engineer's advice to invest more upfront to avoid the steep canyon. Completed in 1893, it did not take long for the cheap route to reveal its flaws:
- 1894 - Landslides at Tunnel #4 kills one railroad worker
- 1895 - Landslides at Tunnel #4 kills one railroad worker
- 1896 - Flooding takes out the line for 3 months
- 1897 - Flooding takes out the line for 2 years
- 1900 - Rockerfeller sells the lowland portion to Northern Pacific
- 1902 - Rockerfeller sells the upper line to Northern Pacific
Good money continued to disappear into this doomed venture as each new owner found themselves the proud recipient of a lemon. But it took the Great Depression to kill the line for good and the rails where shipped to Japan as scrap metal. Moral of the story - always, always listen to your engineer.
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As its an old railroad grade, this is not a challenging hike but it comes with peekaboo views of the river and lots of green. The castle is an old lime kiln (rock boiler) that was completed in 1899. I would share more but it doesn't come with another parable about the perils of ignoring engineers so you are all spared.
Postscript:
Sadly my faithful photographer's back injury resurfaced with a vengeance and initial interventions were unsuccessful. Even the happy pills couldn't get things under control and it was back under the knife. Everything went well and is mending but it will be awhile before the full crew is operational again. How quickly things can go sideways...
Postscript:
Sadly my faithful photographer's back injury resurfaced with a vengeance and initial interventions were unsuccessful. Even the happy pills couldn't get things under control and it was back under the knife. Everything went well and is mending but it will be awhile before the full crew is operational again. How quickly things can go sideways...
