OK, I know it’s not mid-winter. But I was doing some Google searching and came upon a story from this past year’s hike.
The Hocking Hills Mid-Winter Hike is held every year in Hocking Hills State Park right around January 21. Folks hike from Old Man’s Cave to Cedar Falls to Ash Cave, and then buses take them back to where they parked.
I’ve done it three times, barefoot of course.
Looking through the archives, I was surprised to see that I’d never written up any of my mid-winter hikes. I did them in 2006, 2010, and 2011.
Admittedly, it’s not something one can do barefoot every year. The weather must be sufficiently warm. For me, sufficiently warm is somewhere above freezing. I do a lot of barefoot hiking in that sort of temperatures, so doing the mid-winter hike would not be a problem for such a “warmer” day. And earlier entry of mine, I’ve Got CIVD explains the mechanics of it. The other consideration would be not to have deep snow. I can handle snow on my soles, but once it gets on top of my toes, I’m done.
Anyways, what prompted me to write this entry was that I found the following picture (and caption) in the Athens Messenger:
A-hiking they did go
Thousands of people turned out Saturday for the Hocking Hills 46th Annual Winter Hike from Old Man’s Cave to Ash Cave. Notice anything about the man in the middle wearing the black beret and jacket? He walked the 6-mile route barefoot.
Yup, that’s me. I hadn’t noticed I’d been noticed like that.
I also happened to find a couple of other comments on a few other forums. In one for a Columbus Dispatch article, on that forum, somebody said:
Did anyone see the crazy guy hiking barefoot?
Hey, I resemble that remark. But seriously, I was perfectly comfortable. Hiking barefoot wasn’t a problem at all. How could it be crazy?
In another forum, for the Buckeye Trail, I found this:
Besides a couple of guys in shorts and one guy in the Big foot costume there was a man who did the hike barefoot!
I saw the barefooted fellow up in the campground area about 9:45am. I was happy to have my insulated boots on.
Well, to each his own. I was happy to be barefooted!
My bottom line is that we can hike barefooting in a lot of conditions that people really don’t expect. As I often say when people ask me, “It looks more impressive than it really is.”
Way to go mate!
I thought I recognized you in the beret and the black jacket! Nice job Bob.