Lime Kiln

Just one car in parking area as we arrived at 2:30pm on this beautiful warm Friday, sort of surprising. Along the drive to the trailhead from Granite falls noticed the county has put up several Lime Kiln Trail signs. Porta-potty at trailhead was gone. Nice informative message board/kiosk with photos and history of the trail area. The trail begins in woods, pops out onto an old logging road for awhile then reenters woods for the rest of the way. It appeared that all the directional signage on the trail is still intact but 3-4 signs that gave brief historical info are missing. The first half of the trail has been recently brushed and some tread repairs done. The latter half of the trail awaits brushing as brush is encroaching a bit on it. Encountered an impressive large Devil's Club "tree" at one point- right along the trail- wicked! No issues at all with anything blocking the trail.

Was happy to see that quite a few historical artifacts from the railroad, timber and mining days are still around- though the brush made them hard to see at times. We ran into one other small party other than that the entire trail was ours. Had a nice enjoyable foot-soaking lunch at the very scenic end of the trail river access point. Roaring water, beautiful canyon scenery amongst the small boulders and rocks at the river bend, where the old Everett & Monte Cristo Railway crossed the Stillaguamish to enter Tunnel #1 along the line.

We had one brief attack by skeeters and biting flies midway along the trail so on came the Deet and no more troubles. We saw a few frogs, a small snake bulging a little from a recent meal, and lots of robin chirping. Lots of ripe salmonberries and some blah raspberry type things. Not a great trail for sweet berries being so out of the sun. Smallish buttercups here and there, and a great deal of fireweed and foxglove in the sunnier logging road section. This isn't really a trail for great wildflower displays but is for an almost rain-forest type experience with moss-covered trees and a thick understory of ferns and salal. Always in the canyon itself the beautiful Stillaguamish down below you making its presence known.

Kudos to (VOW?) for maintaining the trail, it's in great shape overall and a pleasure to hike on. The first mile is also horse accessible and we did see a truck & trailer pull in as we began our hike but didn't encounter them at all. The horse riders who share that trail section with hikers do a great job helping to maintain it so thanks to them as well. 6.5 miles RT, 150' gain in. 300' out.