Ice Dreams in the Hocking Hills

In mid-February Joan and I visited the Hocking Hills area of Ohio, staying at the Inn and Spa at Cedar Falls. This post won't be a description of the Inn ... Tripadvisor does a good job of reviewing that excellent place ... but it will report on the surprising winter walks we took.

Our first stop was at the Hocking Hills Regional Welcome Center, where we collected brochures and visited the Pencil Sharpener Museum. Then, before even arriving at the Inn, we hiked at Old Man's Cave. Click on this map, which shows the location of the Inn and of the parking for Old Man's Cave, to enlarge it. (Thank you, Google Maps!)

We bundled up and each of us used two walking sticks, which were very useful because we encountered a landscape of frost, ice and snow as soon as we descended into the gorge.

There was both melt water and air flowing under many of the ice sheets. The combination sometimes looked like bubbles, other times like tear drops. Here is a short video clip; at first it's not in focus, but as the zoom pulls back the camera finds the right settings.

We moved upstream along the gorge until the path began to climb towards the rim, but then, a set of rocky steps appeared. The path was narrow and the stones were coated with ice and angled uphill. Even with two sticks apiece, it was too slippery for comfort. Joan and I turned around and proceeded along the trail in the gorge's depths towards Old Man's Cave. By this point my hands were aching from the cold, especially because we had been stopping and gawking so much. I removed my ordinary gloves and switched to thicker outdoor mittens, which helped a lot.

To reach Old Man's Cave we needed to cross an arched stone bridge, shown here in a picture taken later. Joan and I would have been crossing from left to right.

The surface of the bridge was ice-covered, and had already been traversed by a few people, slickening the surface even more. After taking a few tentative steps we decided to continue down the gorge to the lower falls, where we could easily cross the stream and then climb to the rim and approach Old Man's Cave from above, and on the other side.

The lower falls was enchanting too.

As planned, we climbed to the rim and then reached the spot for descending to Old Man's Cave. Partway down, it looked like this, with fascinating rock formations. Clearly we were on the lee side of the gorge, with hardly any snow or ice underfoot.

Lower down, Joan provides some scale.

After visiting the cave our route was back up to the top, where we crossed the stream again, above a stepped bridge we had gingerly used earlier on our way downstream. The sharp edge between the icy and clear zones on these steps was curious.

Crunching along in the thin snow, we reached the upper falls.

Joan provides some scale yet again in this closeup. From here the parking area was within sight.

That evening at the Inn we saw a fox hunting in the snow, partly obscured by the desiccated summer vegetation. The light was low, and I was taking photos through a window at maximum zoom, but this image is intelligible if not artistic.

After breakfast the next day we both enjoyed a massage at the Inn's spa, which we highly recommend. Afterwards we drove to Conkle's Hollow, where, with the sunshine brightening, we soon encountered more ice staircases (click to enlarge). 

Towards the end of the hollow we crossed a shallow stream by carefully placing our weight on the translucent sheet of ice above it, or on strategically placed driftwood. At the hollow's end there was the familiar arrangement of ice created by falling water above ice created by fallen water.

Looking back at the way we had come in, it seemed a different world.

This wide view of the left side of the hollow reveals icicles in the deeper recesses.

Back at the car we had a snack, and then drove on to Ash Cave, which was a short walk from the parking area.

Zooming in on the large mound of ice beneath the falls,

Looking at it from the other side.

I couldn't resist taking a picture of the dangling ice from behind.

The ice mound beneath was intriguing, with a constant spray of water showering onto it.

Our next stop was at the Ash Cave fire tower.

We climbed to the top,

where this was the view. Not bad for February!

Our final stop for the day was at Cedar Falls.

These falls were pretty, but difficult to approach closely in the icy conditions.

There is a trail connecting Cedar Falls and Old Man's Cave, part of the Buckeye Trail, a cross-state hiking path. This section is dedicated to Emma "Grandma" Gatewood, a founding member of the Buckeye Trail Association, and three-time Appalachian Trail thru-hiker. Joan and I had time to hike about halfway to Old Man's Cave before returning. The trail had been rerouted in sections due to fallen trees (last summer's derecho?) and wear-and-tear. Sometimes the trail offered two choices, and which one was preferred wasn't always clear, but it was impossible to get lost.

We had seen a lot of ice by this point, but one formation seized our attention. First we noticed the frozen spray from above coating nearby branches.

Then the mystery of this ice mound grew as we studied it more closely.

Where the spray was currently falling there was a forest of tall, crystal spires, center in the photo above. To the lower right there are frozen flows, terraces of ice. Then, looking back into the walls, the half-caldera, it became even more astonishing.

In the foreground the ice is chunky, like demolition rubble. Then we have the land of vertical shards. But most interesting is the mound revealed as a row of separate columns of ice topped by a polished and terraced cap. Wouldn't you love to see a timelapse video of how this came to be?

We returned to the Inn at Cedar Falls for dinner and a good sleep. There was no rush the next morning, for freezing rain had fallen overnight and we decided to give it time to melt. By the time we departed the roads were in good shape, and we explored some of the county roads in this area. Laurelville, population 528, was our lunch goal because we needed to try out the Ridge Inn Restaurant. It was good, very good; perhaps we should have skipped breakfast! As it was we drove away with a half dozen of their fabulous donuts, which have just the right texture (not full of air, not too thick) and, again, just the right amount of sugar glaze. Too bad it's at least an hour away from our house.

The weather had cooperated for our visit, which doesn't always happen in February. We were able to take each desired hike, and visit both the Inn & Spa at Cedar Falls and the Ridge Inn Restaurant for the first time.

And our luck with the timing of the visit, to see the ice formations at the most interesting point in their evolution, couldn't have been better.