Lime Ridge is a 5 km long limestone ridge in Marble Range Provincial Park.   From Clinton we drove on the Kelly Lake Road, then turned onto the Jesmond Road.   This is the same way we get to the other hikes in the park – Mt. Bowman, Wild Horse Ridge, Mt. Kerr, Porcupine Creek, Jesmond Lookout, Mad Dog Mountain, and Lime Ride East.   For most of these hikes, we have to go onto a backroad to the trailhead.   For the Lime Ridge West route, we turned onto a logging/mining road 14 km up the gravel road.   The road was in fairly good shape and took us up 1.3 km to the edge of a cutblock .    We then followed an old double track as it wound up the lower slopes through the burned forest.

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A forest fire burned the lower slopes of Lime Ridge and adjacent mountains.   Many of the blackened trees are still standing on the mountain slopes.

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The “trail” is really an old road that was used for a mining claim.   It ends at limestone bluffs that had been excavated a bit, but it appeared not to have been a large operation.   We spotted some drill holes and some spoil below the road.

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There was no trail from that point on, just steep slopes which we climbed from the open forest to an open scree slope which provided access between cliffs on both sides.

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Along the lower trail, through the burned forest, and on the upper slopes were a number of wildflowers.   It had snowed at the summit area, and some frost damage was seen at over 6500 feet.     A few images are shared here.   click an image for a larger view and a caption.

 

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We climbed up the talus/scree slopes to the top and then hiked along the ridge to a viewpoint for lunch.   Across the valley to the north was wild Horse Ridge with Mt. Kerr (the highest peak of the area) to the right.

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To the northwest Lime Ridge is an open slope of rocky hills.   This section is where we hike to when we hike the Lime Ridge East Trail.

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To the south Lime Ridge continues on to Porcupine Ridge, the area we hike to when we do the Porcupine Creek Trail.

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After exploring some of the area, we turned back to the route we climbed up to descend the mountain on snowy talus slopes to the forests below.

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The steep hike was mostly off trail with some challenging terrain.   It was only about 6.7 km return but it took about 4 hours.   We have hiked to the top of Lime Ridge on 3 different routes and we will choose the Porcupine Ridge route next time.   The Marble Range is wild and remote with route-finding required for almost all of the routes, but hiking there is rewarding too.  We will be back again this summer to hike another mountain in the area.

More Information:

• Lime Ridge East (the longer route)
• Porcupine Creek to Lime Ridge (the recommended route)
• Other hikes in this range – Mt. Bowman, Mad Dog Mountain, Wild Horse Ridge, Mt. Kerr, Jesmond Lookout, Pavilion Mountain, etc. – use the Search Bar for more articles