A couple of years ago I started a new job teaching Computer Science at a local college. I’ve been so busy with teaching that the volume of posting to this site has plummeted. I hope to get back into the swing of things with this post and future posts about hiking in Ohio and elsewhere. Rest assured that while we have not been posting, we have been hiking and have a huge backlog of material. Expect future articles from TrekOhio about hiking in Ohio, West Virginia, and Japan.
Fort Boreman Park is a 12 acre park in Parkersburg, West Virginia. It is the site of a former Civil War fort situated high on a hill-top overlooking the Ohio River.
For those who enjoy hiking by cliffs, outcroppings and caves, Saltpetre Cave State Nature Preserve is a tiny preserve in Hocking County with an abundance of such features. Although it is only 14 acres in size, it contains four significant recess caves. Two of the caves have 8-foot tall ceilings, mouths that are more than 100 feet wide, and chambers which extend back more than 120 feet into the bedrock. Another cave actually consists of three, vertically stacked recess caves. And a final cave has a decent-sized chamber with two smaller openings. The preserve is named after a white mineral deposit, saltpetre (potassium nitrate), which can be seen in patches on some of the cave ceilings.
In mid-August we visited Holden Arboretum to see two new attractions – the Murch Canopy Walk and the Kalberer Emergent Tower. Located in Lake County, Holden Arboretum is the largest publicly-accessible arboretum in the state of Ohio. With 3,600 acres of gardens and forest and over twenty miles of trails there is much to see and do. This article discusses the new canopy walk and the emergent tower. For more information on Holden Arboretum, please see the posts about our earlier visits.
Wayne National Forest encompasses over a quarter million acres in southeastern Ohio; the national forest is divided into three units: Athens, Marietta, and Ironton (see the links at the bottom for more information on these units). Like all national forests, recreational use of the forest is only one of its purposes. Forestry officials are also concerned with conservation, timber harvesting, mineral management, livestock grazing, watershed protection, and wildlife management. Among the recreational activities available in the Athens Unit are hiking, backpacking, horseback riding, ATV riding, hunting and fishing.
Within the Wildcat Hollow area of the Athens Unit, there is a 15-mile loop trail for backpackers (referred to on signs as the long loop), and a 5-mile loop trail for day hikers (referred to as the short loop). Bob and I have done the short loop hike a couple of times. We went once in the spring, and had a less-than-enjoyable time. The trail was extremely wet and muddy, and I’m referring to a suck-the-hiking-boot-off-of-your-foot kind of muddy. I kept thinking that once we got out of the hollow and onto the ridge, things would improve. But it was pretty much a five-mile slog through the mud.
However, we decided to give it another try when it was drier. So we returned during August of a previous year. The going was much better, and we actually enjoyed ourselves.
Looking for a great place to go hiking in your region of Ohio? I will describe three great places to go hiking in each of five geographic regions of Ohio. In this post I’ve added a fourth hike for southwest Ohio bringing the total to sixteen hikes. All are hikes that Deb and I have completed. Many are favorites that we’ve hiked many times.
Five years ago, I wrote an article entitled “Ten Great Hikes in Ohio” and then a follow-up “Ten More Great Hikes in Ohio”. Since then Deb and I have traveled all over the state and discovered some new and interesting places to hike. We also have some new information about many prior areas where we’ve hiked. This article is an update and replaces the two previous articles.
Among the trails available at Vinton Furnace State Experimental Forest, there is one called “Watch Rock.” If you look at the official map, there is a side trail to a “starred” feature that itself is called “Watch Rock”. Since we were unable to find a description of what “Watch Rock” was, we could only guess. We figured it was a rocky promontory overlooking a scenic vista, but of course we didn’t know for sure. To add to the mystery, during a previous hike we reached the end of the Watch Rock trail without ever seeing the side trail. So this spring we decided to give it another try.
From late February and through the end of March salamanders migrate to their breeding sites. Many amphibian species only breed in vernal pools. Such pools form during the winter, remain throughout the spring, then dry up in the summer. Since the water does not remain in the pool year-long, fish cannot live in them. This means that amphibian eggs, larvae, and/or tadpoles will not be eaten up by fish.
In this post we describe a hike that begins at the parking lot that used to service the dining lodge. Initially we follow the Hemlock Bridge Trail. There is an optional hike on a spur trail that leads to Whispering Cave. However, in this post we instead continue on until we reach Hemlock Bridge. After crossing the bridge we follow the Grandma Gatewood Trail to the Old Man’s Cave region. After exploring this area, we retrace our steps back to where we parked. The round-trip hike is 4.2 miles.
We participated in the 53rd Annual Hocking Hills Winter Hike on Saturday. This was our eighth 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 6.5 miles. A bus returns participants to the starting point.
I am reluctant to go hiking when the high temperature for the day is a single digit, so that’s really put a crimp in our hiking plans for this winter. However we took advantage of a warm spell last week to book a couple nights at the lodge at Mohican State Park. Once there we did one of our favorite hikes that took us by Little Lyons Falls and Big Lyons Falls on the west side of Clear Fork with the return route following along the creek on the opposite side. As a reward for finally getting outside this winter, we got to see the beautiful ice column below.
