I got there a little after 9AM, registered for my site, made several trips with my gear (I camped in the hike-in area on St Rt 374) and got my tent set up. It was nearly 11AM before I finally was able to relax and start hiking. Or vice versa. I hiked from the campsite to Rose Lake. If everything works out perfectly the sourwoods are bright red when the hickories are bright yellow and you can get a few fluffy white clouds reflected in the lake all in one photo. As I mentioned on the photo page, the sourwoods were a dull red, the hickories were dull orange, and I was an hour too late for the best light. In other words, it was beautiful. I won't allow myself to be spoiled because I was able to get nearly perfect conditions in 2009.
Of course the photo quality sucks and I've been wanting to improve on this for the last six years. Hopefully my patience will be rewarded.
Anyway, I spent most of the first day hiking along the rim and in some hollows of Queer Creek after it meets Old Man's Creek. These hollows have 100' waterfalls at the end of them that put the other falls in the area to shame. When they have water. On this visit they were mere trickles. But they still have vertical cliff walls and rocks and steep slopes to climb on. It may be the "newness" of it for me or the lack of other people anywhere near me, but I like this area better than the well populated trail from Old Man's Cave to Cedar Falls. I actually did not go anywhere near Old Man's Cave or the Upper or Lower Falls any of the four days I was hiking in the region.
On Day Two I went to Conkle's Hollow and then bugged out onto the horse trails of Hocking State Forest that get to within 30 feet of the East Rim Trail. I frequently abandoned the horse trails when the scenery was better off the trails. There are great patches of deciduous forest and areas that are 80% hemlock, gentle slopes and deep hollows. Why should the horses have all the fun.
Conkle's Hollow used to be a lot less crowded and I used to wonder why. It is like all the highlights of the entire Hocking Hills region in a half mile trail that is paved most of the way. The 2 1/2 mile rim trail has great views from the edges of the cliffs out over the canopies of the trees in the gorge below. It is the hiking equivalent of Steven Wright's microwave fireplace (you can spend a night by the fire in just eight minutes). Anyway, this is not the case anymore. The have expanded the parking area and there are still people parking in the grass, in the trees, in Big Pine Creek, etc. And now they have gone and made things even worse (if you detest crowds, and who doesn't): They now have flush toilets. Gone are the pit latrines that only have a roof over half of the building. It is only a matter of time before the snack stand and souvenir shop opens.
 |
| Big Spring Hollow |
 |
| Big Spring Hollow |
I usually hike in the Rock Climbing and Rappelling area and Long Hollow across the road from there but I did not make it there this time. Big Spring Hollow in the Climbing and Rappelling area is one of the highest waterfalls in the region and the cliffs and slump blocks here are worth the price of admission (having to climb steep hills).
 | |
| The cliffs in the Climbing and Rappelling area |
 |
| Slump block |
Long Hollow starts (or ends) in the parking lot for the Climbing and Rappelling area. There is no sign for this, just a horse trail leading into the hollow. I had been to the C&R area many times and had seen the the trail leaving the parking lot but I had never taken it. On one visit I decided to leave my backpack in the car when I hiked the C&R area and I was hungry when I got back to the car. I figured I would take my lunch and walk the trail at the end of the parking lot. It only took a couple of minutes before I realized that this was just a horse trail, and a muddy one at that. The hillside to the right was almost entirely covered in hemlocks so I decided that I would eat my lunch there. I did. I lounged for a while, maybe even read a little, and then went back to the car. It wasn't until a year later that I fully explored this trail at the end of the parking lot.
That trip was in April. I was going to keep following the horse trail and see where it goes. I knew that if there are that many hemlocks in the area, there would likely be a deep hollow. So I followed the trail further than I had the previous year. Then I saw a sign on the left that said "No Horses Beyond This Point" and obviously that meant that there is something worth seeing beyond that point, they just don't want horses tearing it up. I was rewarded after a decently strenuous hike up a steep slope. There was a 60' waterfall that was flowing then but is likely dry for half the year Because of the hill separating this side hollow from the main hollow it was well protected and there was still a couple patches of ice. I was all excited by this so I hung out there for a while and then decided to hike up out of the hollow to the rim.
I hiked along the rim for ten or fifteen minutes, expecting to find another small hollow I could descend into and follow back to the horse trail in Long Hollow. When I didn't find it I started looking for a place that had no vertical drops so I could pick my way down. As I was doing that I would stop every couple minutes to scan the ground ahead looking for the best route. During one of these stops I heard what I was sure was the waterfall at the end of Long Hollow. I got excited again and gave up zig-zagging down the slope and just angled downhill towards the sound of the waterfall. I got back on the horse trail and looked up (I had to look where I was walking so I wouldn't trip) and uttered a small, "Whoa." I could see the cliffs at both sides of the hollow as it narrowed and could the waterfall was louder. I couldn't see it because of the small hil and slump blocks between me and the end of the hollow. In fact, the horse trail descended into the streambed, the only way through to the waterfall. When I got to the other side I loudly exclaimed, "Whoa!"
There was not one, but two waterfalls. If I was standing in the middle of the clock the larger fall was at 10 and the smaller one at about 1. The place on the rim were they started falling were probably eighty feet apart in a straight line (obviously the end of the hollow is round). The smaller waterfall not only had less volume of water but was a shorter fall. It landed, flowed down a rock face, went over a smaller fall, and finally reached the same level of the bigger fall thrty feet away from it. Because of the topography and trees it is impossible to get both falls in one picture, at least it was with my lame digital camera that I had with me.
 |
| The bigger fall on the left. |
 |
| The smaller fall on the right. |
When I got home I looked on the web to see if anyone else had discovered this hidden gem. I was pretty sure that the horses that went there had riders on them, so someone must have taken better pictures than I had. I found this: TrekOhio While I was wandering around on the rim I missed a cave big enough to fit 21 horses in. But there are no pictures of the waterfalls. So I will end this post the way I began it, in pursuit of the perfect picture.
No comments:
Post a Comment