Hill Mill Ruin Mystery Cache

Hill Mill Ruin

  The posted co-ordinates are not those of the cache, they are just somewhere along the bike path in back of the hill, but this cache will be very easy to find if you keep your eyes peeled!

  Beneath Parliament Hill lies the dilapidated ruins of an old steam mill pictured in the photo above which was taken in 1884. It is the building directly beneath the Library of Parliament with the tall smokestack. More detailed info about the ruin can be found here on a page by M.Davidson. Almost the entire foundation remains intact and I used to bike by it every day without really knowing what it was. The prominent feature that caught my eye and what you have to look for are two iron bars poking out of the side of the stonework.

1.   Putting on your Indianna Jones hat and using the old photo from 1884, walk along the bike path in back of Parliament Hill until you locate the stone foundation with the two iron bars (the foundation and iron bars should be easy to spot).

2. With your back close to the two bars, take a GPS reading (the hill does not allow for very accurate readings but ballpark will do in this case).

3. Project this reading 20 meters 170 Degrees TRUE north (or just eyeball it and walk to it) and near there you will find the cache container (these coordinates fall a tad short)

4. The cache is located behind a small fence that just happens to end 5 meters to your right for you to walk around.

  The site was pretty neat when I scoped it out in the summer, I've included some shots below. I'd give M. Davidson's page a look-see before heading over. In the summer there was evidence of a small fire-pit where I suppose some of the locals kept warm. And I would not go poking around too much in the half-buried archways and holes because they seem to have served as a privy at some point in time<grin>.

The place is incredibly busy in the summer, but once you're up on top of the foundation, no one can really see you with all the foliage. In the winter it is somewhat less busy but even with no leaves to shield you it is far back enough that it should not be a problem to retrieve the cache without attracting too much attention.