Barefoot Bushwhacking

On Monday I took an 8-mile hike down at Zaleski State Forest/Lake Hope State Park. I wanted to take a look at some of the recess caves I knew were in the area, and that required quite a bit of bushwhacking. I ended up doing about 2 miles of bushwhacking. The caves were on either side of Lake Ridge Road, and this shows some of my bushwhacking route:

Lake Hope Bushwhacking Route (Click for larger context)

I started on the east side and then headed (mostly) west up and over the top of the ridge. The caves are at points 1 and 2.

Creekside at Habron Hollow things are muddy, sandy, and wet. Of course, bare feet work well on that. But they also work quite well ascending towards the caves.

The geology of Zaleski is rather different than at Hocking Hills. Yes, they are both typical Ohio valley and ridge, but the main feature determining things at Hocking Hills is the Blackhand sandstone, which tends to produce gorges with fairly level valleys. At Zaleski, the Blackhand formation is a couple of hundred feet below the younger deposits that make up the terrain, which are a mix of sandstones, shales, clays, coal, and limestone. The approaches to the caves are almost always pretty steep:

Approach to Recess Cave

That’s the view from the cave looking back at the way I came.

That steepness is pretty tricky to navigate. But with bare feet you can feel just how good of a grip you have. With your toes you can grab in for a better hold. You also have a lot more flexibility in the way you can place your foot in order to get a more firm footing. And finally, it is a lot more fun just to feel all the stuff you are walking on.

On to the cave (point 1 on the map above):

Entrance to Recess Cave

As you can see, the caves here are nowhere near as high as Hocking Hills caves. At Hocking Hills, they can be more than 100 feet high, which is sometimes the difference between the well-cemented portions at the top and bottom of the Blackhand. Here at Zaleski, it just depends on how soft the layers are underneath one hard layer. This cave is pretty wide, though. Moving to the left . . .

Middle Portion of Recess Cave

and then even farther to the left . . .

Waterfall at the Recess Cave

This is actually somewhat reminiscent of the waterfall at Parrish Rocks in Hocking Hills, but it is less than a third as high.

There are also coal seams. If you look at the back of the cave, this is what you see:

Coal Seam

You can see the coal seam near the top of the picture. High-sulphur, stinky coal. If you burn it, it smells like an Irish peat bog. But this coal helped lead to the development of Ohio. This was an area that produced a lot of iron and coal, and the Hope Furnace is a remnant of those times.

I keep calling these “caves”, but they really are not caves in the more usual sense. Usually caves are formed when limestone gets dissolved, usually well-underground. These are merely “recess caves”, in which the water makes cracks in the rock that then let the weaker rocks fall down and get eroded away. These formations are quite typical of southeastern Ohio. In fact, the region is often called the “Hanging Rock” region, since the harder rocks just hang out there.

Anyways, I then climbed the steep edge around the cave and went up and over the top of the ridge. Descending down the other side, I then encountered the matching cave on the other side (point 2 on the map above).

Matching Recess Cave

The rock formations in the ground are layered (at close to flat), so the hard layer that allowed the cave to form at point 1 re-emerges at point 2, and a similar (though smaller) cave results. Even the coal seam matches up. If you look way in the back of that cave, you can again see the coal seam that was also exposed on the other side of the ridge:

Matching Coal Seam

After descending into Wildcat Hollow, I then bushwhacked up Keeton Hollow, where I saw a Northern Water Snake (sorry, no picture) and did a bunch more miles to finish my hike. Near the end, I walked along the northern edge of Lake Hope itself. Here’s a bit of a view on the eastern edge:

East Side of Lake Hope (Click for panoramic view)

It’s pretty shallow on this end, so a lot of water lilies grow here. Also, on the far shore is an Indian mound (near those pine trees, if you can make them out). The dam is pretty recent (in historical terms), so this point overlooked the creek and probably had some sort of ceremonial significance.

All in all a very satisfying and interesting hike.