It’s always fun to hike at an old favorite. And this time of year, being barefoot can sometimes provoke a bit of comment.
I hadn’t been to Old Man’s Cave and Parrish Rocks for a while, so that’s where I went yesterday.
What a great hike.
When I got to the parking lot, a couple and their dog were returing from Old Man’s Cave, but they really wanted to do more, and the signage there didn’t really tell them how to get to Cedar Falls. My route was going to be coincident with what they wanted to do, so I offered to lead them along for a while.
They’d come down from Medina, and it’s a bit of a waste to travel that far and not see everything there is to see. In the end, I hiked with them as far as the intersection with Queer Creek. I also left them one of my topo maps to get them the rest of the way, and to show them how to get up to Rose Lake along the Gorge Overview Trail.
They didn’t seem to be too bothered being led by a barefoot hiker (though, at the cars, they wanted to give me some time to get my shoes on, until I explained that, no, I hiked barefoot).
Here we are where Old Man’s Creek joins Queer Creek and the main trail heads up to Cedar Falls.
The Junction of Queer and Old Man’s Creeks
That’s Allison and Rick, and their dog is Nash.
We parted ways and I headed towards Parrish Rocks, where I’ve been before. This time I visited some of the auxiliary scenery along the way.
All along the trail there were all sorts of rock faces.
Up Against the Wall
In addition, some locations had waterfalls that created rather large recess caves. Here I am in one of the side caves as I approached a large one.
In a Small Recess
(Click for larger version.)
I think I like this picture the best of all the ones I took on this hike. (And wouldn’t that be a fabulous place to shelter for a night?)
Getting closer to the waterfall and recess cave, this was the view. (You can see just a hint of the water coming down, and the overhang has a nice erratic nature to it.)
Approaching a Recess Cave and Waterfall
Here’s a shot looking out from the cave, past the waterfall.
Behind the Waterfall
This was a fabulously interesting cave. The back of the cave was filled with elliptical curved surfaces that reflected back the sound of the water falling. As I walked along I kept getting a stereo holographic picture in my ears. The falling water got louder and softer depending on how much was being reflected back at me. Utterly fascinating and enjoyable.
One thing about visiting a place like Clear Creek is that the special places all have names; this is because they are rather rare in that park. After all, it’s right on the edge of the Hocking Hills area.
But down in Hocking Hills State Park, the special places pile on top of one another, and if you named them all, you’d run out of words rather quickly. It has a surfeit of riches, and it is an amazing experience to hike through.
I continued on to Parrish Rocks, where bare feet were perfect for crossing Queer Creek to get to them. Here’s my attempt and an “artsy” shot of the falls, framed by two trees.
Parrish Rocks Waterfall — Framed
Here we are pretty much near the base of the falls, and looking up to the top. We’ve had a bit of rain lately, so the falls are running nicely.
Parrish Rocks and Waterfall
With bare feet it’s also easy to get up behind the waterfall.
At the Bottom of the Waterfall
(Didn’t manage to focus on myself very well. It’s rather tricky doing so with the timer, because the autofocus kicks in when the timer is set. So I have to focus on where I’m going to be when the picture is taken, and I don’t always get it right.)
I then did a bit of climbing and made it to one of the ledges almost at the top of the falls. Here’s a shot looking down to where I was in the previous photo.
Parrish Rocks Waterfall from Near the Top
(Click for larger version.)
This is probably 80-100 feet down. You can see the tree trunks that have fallen to the bottom.
From there I really started trekking, heading over to Cedar Falls (which was also flowing nicely), and diverted up to Rose Lake.
Easing Along Rose Lake
(Click for larger version.)
The temperature hovered between about 42° and 45°, which is just perfect for going barefoot. My feet never even thought about feeling cold. Total distance hiked: almost 7 miles.
There’s no better way to spend a December afternoon.
Ahcuah 
Wonderful- you are the person to hike with that is for sure!!! I admire how often you hike! Thankyou for sharing and happy Holidays!!!
Question- How was the intensity of the hike???? Sat compared to Beck’s Rocks??? On a scale from one to ten!? So saw things i have not seen on these hikes!!! I have missed so much!!!
Hmmm, that’s a tricky question. As far as I’m concerned, none of the hikes at Clear Creek are particularly intense, with the exceptions of the Adventure Hikes, and they are intense mainly from speed and distance. That doesn’t mean that the Clear Creek hikes aren’t great hikes—they just aren’t “intense”.
Much of this hike wasn’t intense at all. Once you get down into the gorge, or up on the rim, things are usually pretty flat. However, getting up to the rock wall (picture above), or from the bottom of Parrish Rocks to the rim are pretty intense because they are so steep. I was doing a pretty good job of huffing and puffing for those. By the way, if you look at this blog entry, you’ll see that right near Parrish Rocks is a version of Beck’s Rocks that requires that you crawl through the gap.
A map of the area is here: Old Man’s Cave to Parrish Rocks to Cedar Falls to Rose Lake and back to Old Man’s Cave. (By the way, while the topo map spells it “Parish”, early maps show the land owned by Solomon Parrish with 2 ‘r’s, so that’s what I use.)
At Parrish Rocks I ended up making that a lot more intense than it really needed to be. That picture from near the top of the waterfall was quite difficult to get, involving a lot of climbing are carefully choosing a route. However, shortly after that picture, I overdid it a bit trying to get an even better shot and got into a situation where I could not get back down the way I went up. So I spent a fairly long, difficult time trying to find a different route down. I succeeded (obviously, or I wouldn’t be writing this :-)), but only after a few dead ends and backtracks (and an 8-foot jump at the end).