Into the Cantwell Cliffs Wilderness

Yesterday I returned to Cantwell Cliffs, partly because I wanted better pictures than the ones I took with a crummy camera in 2000 Miles.

But I also wanted to see if I could avoid getting lost for a change.

The problem I was having with getting lost was that the valley/gorge there is just too lush, so I couldn’t get any good feel for the terrain. In addition, the streams do a pretty good meander about the time they all meet at about the same area. So it was hard to keep track of which one I was actually crossing.

Here’s the map of my latest. The other colors are previous explorations—yesterday’s hike is added in dark green.

Various Excursions into Henley Hollow

I didn’t get lost on the blue hike. On that one I was bushwhacking right below the cliffs. It’s hard to get lost with that sort of feature guiding you. It was when I tried to stay down it the valley that I had trouble (the red and orange).

So yesterday I made sure to cross the main creek to get to an area that just wasn’t so busy. That worked out, I always felt I knew where I was, and I got my pictures.

Just like last time, the Indian Pipe was popping up all over.

Indian Pipe

As a reminder, this is a very kind of different plant. It is white because it does not do photosynthesis. Instead, it is a parasite on trees via a fungus.

I first went up to the northernmost recess cave, spot “L” on the above map. It looked like it had been carved out by the stream’s meander.

Undercut Cave

You can see the stream coming at us under the overhang.

There were bare footprints in the left in the mud! Well, undoubtedly, they were mine. However, I’d left those footprints way back on June 14, and they were still there, which was pretty surprising to me.

From there I headed down-creek and really intended to explore that side gorge heading to the west. However (no, I didn’t get lost), it was quite rife with stinging nettles. Stinging nettles are no fun with bare legs (or bare feet, for that matter). I’d been dodging them every time I hiked around here, and I’d just had enough of them.

So I made the “command decision” to wait for fall or winter to do a more detailed exploration of that area.

Instead, I headed uphill to see what was on the end of the prong between two gorges, spot “M” on the map.

As is usual in the Hocking Hills area, there was more spectacular scenery.

Prong

From there (remaining not-lost), it was easy to head up-gorge to try to get a better picture of the mini-falls at the tip of that one, point “N”. To get there I tried walking next to the stream (it’s shorter without the meanders) but the stinging nettles forced me to go right into the creek-bed itself. Again, when one is barefooted, this is easy to do and not worth a second thought.

So, here are some better pictures of the gorge at falls at the tip there.

First, the mini-waterfall.

The Final Drop

For perspective, that’s about 10 feet. Obviously, it had pretty much dried up since I was there last week.

There was another mini-waterfall above it.

The Penultimate Drop

In fact, this whole tip was a series of layers (unlike the uninterrupted 200 foot drop near the Cantwell Cliffs parking lot).

Here’s a shot from way up near the top, looking back downstream (click for 900×600 version).

Overview

Layers, nothing but layers (and there on the bottom you can see the mini-waterfall from the previous shot looking from the other direction).

I also came across an Eastern Box Turtle.

Eastern Box Turtle

Usually they’ll retreat into their shells when I approach, but this guy seemed unconcerned about my presence. I was able to take quite a few pictures, from fairly close up.

Looking Distinguished

We’re having a bit of a heat wave here right now. The temperature during my hike hovered around 92°, and the humidity was way up there. I really had no trouble with the heat (though I have to admit to being pretty much barefoot all over—the odds of my meeting another person out there were extremely low).

This also makes my Rolling My Eyes in the Grand Canyon even more puzzling. It was about 90° there at that time, and (I thought) well within my tolerances.

When I made it back to the parking lot at Cantwell Cliffs there were two park vehicles and two rangers, along with a group of about 5 teenagers, and some medical equipment. I’d heard sirens earlier and kind of figured that maybe somebody had suffered from heat exhaustion.

However (H/T Alesia Miller, it turns out that one of the teens’ friends had fallen off one of the cliffs. According to this story, he fell about 20 feet.

It is a reminder that this area is not benign, and one really needs to pay close attention to what is safe and what pushes the edge of safety.