The 26-mile Lost Turkey Trail was built in 1976 by the Youth Conservation Corps. It follows the area of the Allegheny Front, skirting the southeastern corner of Cambria County. The Trail connects the peak of Blue Knob State Park (https://www.dcnr.pa.gov/StateParks/FindAPark/BlueKnobStatePark/Pages/default.aspx) and Ski Area (https://blueknob.com/) to the Babcock Picnic Area of Gallitzin State Forest (http://www.docs.dcnr.pa.gov/cs/groups/public/documents/document/dcnr_20033393.pdf). Mapping of the section of trail that you will need is available at http://www.docs.dcnr.pa.gov/cs/groups/public/documents/document/dcnr_20027169.pdf with the other half at http://www.docs.dcnr.pa.gov/cs/groups/public/documents/document/dcnr_20027168.pdf. Don’t worry, you won’t have to hike the whole thing, but if you want to tackle it all at once in one day, you may want to check out the Lost Turkey Trail Races. https://www.facebook.com/lostturkeytrailultra/.
This cache is an approximately 1.5 mile round trip hike from the Burnt House parking area. The intermediate road crossing of the Trail is a little north of the parking coordinates. You can connect off-road from the parking by crossing the footbridge to the Lost Turkey pavilion and hiking the open area, parallel to the road. The trail in this segment is actually a primitive rail-trail. But unlike the other popular rail-trails highlighted in this Geotrail, this was a logging railroad. So instead of the typical 1-3% rail-trail slopes, this trail varies from 5-10%. The overall trail crosses State Game Lands and privately owned land in addition to the State Park and State Forest lands noted above. Most of your walk to this cache is within the State Park, but the cache itself is outside of those boundaries.
While generally limited to hiking only, this section of the trail is also open to mountain biking. Other segments, not included in this cache are open to snowmobiling.
This is Featured Cache #6 of the Cambria TRAILS Geotrail, which highlights the diverse TRAIL amenities of the area. Be sure to collect and record the Code Word from in (or near, in the case of micros) the cache to your official Passport, which can be obtained from the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau. A map and list of all caches featured in the Geotrail can be found at the Geotrail page https://tinyurl.com/y4foescg.
Added Spoiler pics due to poor gps reception in the hollow. Cache is not up the steep hillside, but on low side of the old railroad grade bench cut above the trail hairpin.