To start the hike you walk down hill (and eventually down steps) past the shelter house to the edge of the cliffs. If you go to the right you can view the world from above first. I chose to descend into the hollow. Following this route and turning left brings you to this:
The trail goes between the cliff and the rock. The out-dated map online refers to this as Fat Woman's Squeeze. That name is no longer used in the park. It is actually not as much of a squeeze as it appears in the picture. Personally, even though I weigh &% pounds more than when I first hiked here #$ years ago, I do not think it is a squeeze at all, although I do find myself wishing that I had worn a smaller backpack. Stupid bulky backpacks.
Anyway, after you hiked the portion of the trail that is definitely not called Fat Woman's Squeeze you will find yourself looking at a waterfall. It is not a particularly large fall but it is the largest of the three in the park. There used to be paths going behind the waterfall and over rocks and along sandy slopes before going downhill and joining the gorge trail. That is no longer an official trail but the odds are pretty good that you will see someone there anyway. The official trail curls to the right around that half of Fat Woman's Squeeze if it was still called that to the proverbial fork in the trail. Going right the trail follows the base of the cliffs. Going to the left is the Gorge Trail Loop. This trail provides distant views of the waterfalls and cliffs at the beginning and a wetter, greener, lusher landscape along the left side of the loop compared to most of the trails in Hocking Hills State Park. On this day I skipped the Gorge Trail and took a right.
After only a couple minutes you come to the second waterfall. It had only been below freezing for 36 hours before this picture was taken so the icicles are nowhere near their peak. The cones at the bottom of the falls weren't either.
Now is a good time to talk about why I like Cantwell Cliffs and what makes it different than other places in the Hocking Hills region. It wasn't obvious at first to me, so I will share it with you and spare you the hours of deep thought and personal reflection that it took for me to figure it out. It is that you can walk along the bottom of the 80' to 100' tall cliff, touching the cliff wall with your hand and feeling the splatter of the waterfall on your face, and 10 to 15 minutes later you are walking along the top of the cliff with an obstructed view of the trail below. There are higher cliffs, bigger falls and better views (see Conkle's Hollow) in the region but being able to quickly transition from the bottom to the top is rather unique. You brain is able to piece together the view from below and above into one panorama better than any camera and software can. Or maybe I just can't take pictures worth a damn.
Anyway, the trail goes past the base of the waterfall and climbs up some steps, many of which are nowhere near horizontal. (In the middle of the climb there are more steps to the right that lead to the top of the cliff. If you won't to hike up and experience an even quicker transition from bottom of the cliff to the top you can. Just be sure to come back down and continue the hike.) It had started to snow a little harder about this time and that, combined with the interesting views of the cliff wall on my right and the small stream from the waterfall increasingly further below me on my left kept my eyes occupied. Before I knew it another small hollow had opened up in front of me and their was the third waterfall. The trail again goes by the base of the waterfall. I wanted the perfect picture but the waterfall was too tall to get it all in one pic and the trail was never far enough away before it started climbing up several more angled and now snow-covered steps, This is actually a bigger climb than the one after the second waterfall and you are only about twenty feet from the top of the cliff. This part of the trail is level so you can concentrate on the view of the gorge as it widens to the left and a wide hollow approaches from the right as you follow the cliff face in that direction. I tried to concentrate on the view but all I could see is snow and I was distracted by the smell of woodsmoke. I was sure that this was a hallucination.
The trail continues around to the right but you don't get to see the stream (and waterfall) that created this larger hollow as you are near the park boundary. In my younger days I did hike down to it and was disappointed. The waterfall was only 10 -15 feet and did not have much water compared to the other waterfalls. There was also a washing machine near the bottom of the fall. If you stay on the trail you will be spared this disappointment as the trail climbs some mostly level steps to the top of the cliffs. Again, there is a nice view from up here, especially when it is snowing. I love winter hikes. As I approached the rest shelter I had forgotten that I smelled smoke earlier. I actually was startled when there was suddenly a little kid standing six feet from me. There was a family of three that had lit a fire in the fireplace of the rest shelter. It is a small shelter and only has three walls and I had no memory of there being a fireplace but, there they were, starting to prepare lunch.
Right after you pass the shelter the third waterfall comes back into view. The view is spectacular. At most of the waterfalls in the region the cliff walls along the side of the stream are vertical half of the distance and then slope the rest of the way to the stream. Here they are vertical nearly the entire distance. Everything is further below you, but as far as horizontal distance everything is closer to you. There are trees that are only thirty feet from you that are eighty feet tall before their first branches. Sadly, I have not been able to capture this in a pic. There is just no perspective when you are standing at the edge off a cliff staring down eighty feet of tree trunk. I promise you won't be disappointed when you see it in person.
The view is repeated at the second waterfall. The trail goes back to the base of the steps that lead back up to the parking lot. There is a sign straight ahead saying that it is not a trail and is illegal to hike off the trail. Years ago there was no such sign and I did hike to the top of the first waterfall. The view is not as spectacular because the hollow is wider and there are no trees growing near the cliffs. Even though there was no sign telling me not to I still only hiked there once, so there must not be much to see. In this case it is best (and safest) to obey the sign and either head back down and hike the Gorge Trail Loop or return to the parking lot.
So, if you stop and stare a lot and hike the Gorge Trail it would be about three miles and it would take a little over two hours. Skip the Gorge Trail and stare at stuff less (hard to do your first couple times here) and you can cut the time and distance in half. This would matter if you had limited time and were trying to go to several of the lesser-visited attractions in the region (Rock House, Cantwell Cliffs, Rockbridge, and Clear Creek).
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