We participated in the 49th Annual Hocking Hills Winter Hike yesterday. This was our fifth time participating in this winter hike that runs from Old Man’s Cave to Rose Lake, Cedar Falls, and ends at Ash Cave for a total distance of 6 miles. A bus returns participants to the starting point.
The weather for this hike was grey skies with snow flurries in the morning. Temperatures for nearby Logan, OH were as follows:
| 7 AM | 10 AM | 1 PM |
| 11° F (-12° C) | 15° F (-9° C) | 19° F (-7° C) |
Over 3,000 people participated in this year’s hike. Turn-out was down from prior years, perhaps some people were put off by the low temperatures. Nevertheless Hocking State Park was decked out with a festive blanket of snow, many decorative icicles, and ice crusted waterfalls.
Near the beginning of the hike an ODNR naturalist introduced hikers to the screech-owl below. The following photos are in the order in which they were seen during the hike.
As usual, the half-way point at Cedar Falls featured corn bread and hot navy bean soup. The hardy hikers and their dogs (there were many dogs taking part this year) all seemed to be enjoying themselves.
Once again our thanks to the staff of ODNR and the many volunteers that worked hard in cold conditions to make this year’s hike a success.
Additional information
- An Overview of Hiking Trails in the Hocking Hills
- Ohio 2014 Winter Hike Calendar
- Gearing Up For Ohio Winter Hiking Season
- Hocking Hills Winter Hike 2013 – last year’s hike
- Hocking County Parks & Nature Preserves
More on the Annual Hocking Hills Winter Hike
53rd Annual Hocking Hills Winter Hike, January 2018
51st Annual Hocking Hills Winter Hike, January 2016
50th Annual Hocking Hills Winter Hike, January 2015
48th Annual Hocking Hills Winter Hike, January 2013
Your photos are beautiful! Do you mind saying what type of
camera you use?
Thanks so much, Cathie. 🙂 All the photos in this post were taken with a point-and-shoot: a Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS20. However I’ve done some post-processing on all of these photos as well. I don’t think the auto white balance works as well in winter. The white snow tends to make everything else look too dark. So after I’ve loaded the photo onto my computer I adjust the white balance, and I also do what’s called “tone mapping” to bring out some of the detail that was hidden in shadow originally. People can do this sort of thing with Photoshop, but I use a free, open-source program called, Gimp. I really like the free part, but it took me awhile to get a handle on using it.
There were a lot of beautiful winter hike photos. Here, where I live, we have a little snow, but in the North plenty of.
What a gorgeous place! That Devil’s Bathtub shot makes me dizzy looking down in it, lol.
Donna, I was on a bridge looking down at the Devil’s Bathtub. Fortunately I didn’t get dizzy and fall in. 😀
Loved this one! Beautiful. I mentioned it in my Jan 20th post – http://aquilasorchard.blogspot.com/ You guys sure make me wish I could visit Ohio!
Beautiful shots! I’m impressed that your camera keeps working when it’s so cold…mine does NOT like the cold, even with fairly new batteries.
Karen, I think that I was just lucky. My husband’s camera just plain up and died. Although we were sad to see it go, at least it was an older point-and-shoot that had served us for a few years.