Hope and Change

I had a chance to get out to Lake Hope State Park/Zaleski State Forest yesterday. Since I’m planning another trip Out West, and since I’ve also been doing a lousy job of training for it, I wanted to do a long hike, just to see how my body was doing.

I managed about 12 miles.

Let me start with a map, with my route marked in pink.

Lake Hope and Zaleski

I parked at the spot on Long Ridge that I’ve marked “Park”. (Heh!) From there it was following various mountain biking (and other) trails in a counter-clockwise direction. You may notice a few oddities in my route, and I’ll get to discussing them.

It was a great day to view nature busting out all over. I saw bear corn (Conopholis americana, which I originally learned as “squaw root”, but “squaw” is becoming a perjorative, so I’ll go with “bear corn”) all over the place.

Patch of Bear Corn

This is a parasitic plant that no longer produces chlorophyll. It prefers oaks and beeches, and that was an oak this bunch was sitting under. At this point I was along the creek in Keeton Hollow.

Here’s a nice close-up of the flowers.

Bear Corn

A bit further on, working my way up the hill towards the Grouse Point picnic area, I came across this box turtle.

Big Box Turtle

It was about 9 inches in length. I spotted it just a tad too late—it had already seen me and retreated into its shell.

Pro tip: if you are ever in a survival situation (not likely at Zaleski, though), don’t eat box turtles. Turns out they are poisonous. They eat poisonous mushrooms that don’t affect them, but will affect you if you eat them.

Not too far past the turtle I came across a salamander, just sitting on the trail.

Salamander

This is the eft (juvenile) stage of the red-spotted newt. At this point in their lives they wander around quite a bit looking for new locations (and cross-breeding). Yup, this guy was definitely wandering.

I also got a nice close-up.

Red-Spotted Newt

[It’s not photography skill. Sometimes I just get lucky. If you take enough pictures, that’ll happen.]

From the Grouse Point picnic area I headed down the Little Sandy trail. There was a sign at the beginning.

Trail Closed for Maintenance

I had a pretty good idea why the trail might be “closed” but decided to take it anyways. If nothing else I knew I could bushwhack my way through.

The trail descends down to Little Sandy Run. Here I am showing the utility of hiking barefoot in the creek.

Trekking Through Little Sandy Run

[No, the trail itself doesn’t run through the creek. Yes, I staged the picture because I could. Yes, I have shorts on—it’s just a very long T-shirt I’m wearing.]

Down along the creek there were also a bunch of these flowers blooming.

Striped White Violets

I’m pretty sure those are striped white violets (even though the leaf is not what I usually associate with violets). I love the way that, while the blooming flower is white, it turns violet when spent.

If you look at the map again (on the left), you’ll see that I suddenly made a jog. That was partially for the exercise of climbing the hill there (150 foot ascent) but also to avoid what I knew was coming up if I tried to stay on the Little Sandy. At the top of the hill, I turned south along the Sidewinder Trail, and it took me back down to the creek.

The creek looked like this, and that is why the Little Sandy trail was officially closed.

Little Sandy . . . Pond

This is just slightly downstream of that picture of me walking in the creek. So what’s going on?

Here’s a panoramic shot that shows more of it.

Panoramic Pond

[You’ll need to click on it to see the more detailed version.]

If you look on the left (downstream side), you’ll see what’s going on.

Dam It!

That’s a beaver dam. There are beavers all along Little Sandy Run down here. That is just the first of a series of dams, and from past hikes I know they’ve been there, in one form or another, for quite a while. I think the trail “maintenance” they are doing is figuring out how to reroute the trail.

Continuing south I finally reached the entrance road to Lake Hope State Park. From here, I wanted to take advantage to one of the big changes at Zaleski State Forest (which surrounds the State Park).

Thanks to Trek Ohio, I’d recently found out that the Zaleski Backpacking Trail had a brand new extension. The really cool thing about that (from my perspective) was that it meant that it was now possible to circumnavigate Lake Hope in a single hike without having to do too much hiking on a road.

(I had circumnavigated the lake in the past, but as you can see from the map, that required quite a bit of time along State Route 278.)

Also, I have to say that Trek Ohio is a really great resource for hiking anywhere in Ohio. Deborah and Robert Platt have taken advantage of retirement to document so many places to hike (and while having a great time doing the hiking themselves).

This was a nice addition to the trail system there.

I’d actually checked out the trail a few weeks ago and followed it all the way to where it meets up with the older portion of the backpacking trail (the newly renamed Point B), so this time hiking it I was feeling confident enough to do a bit of bushwhacking exploring.

As one heads up the nose of the ridge for the trail, on the left (north) you can see some pretty decent rock formations. You’ll have to look through all the leaves on the trees, though, to see them.

Nose Rocks

The rocks do show up better in person. Or, if you go to the Trek Ohio link, there’s a picture the Platts took over the winter with the leaves off the trees.

I decided to bushwhack up towards the rocks to check them out. Along the way, I came across some more wildlife. Or maybe I should call it wilddeath instead.

Deceased

I’m guessing it’s a squirrel? Except the jaw looks a little large for a squirrel. It’s also the case that, in death and after been attacked by various beetles (that black spot at the nose is not the nose, but a beetle), there’s a lot of shrinkage and distortion. So maybe this was a fox or a coyote.

Getting closer to the rocks I saw this.

The Top Rocks

Pretty impressive, but it was also interesting to see that small alcove. Here it is up close.

Alcove

It’s not very big. I could probably squat in it, but that’s about it.

From there, I just followed the ridge until I rejoined the official trail, but then I bushwhacked back off the trail to head down to the Peninsula Trail. (I already knew it was a long hike—I wanted to shorten it a bit so this bushwhacking detour worked perfectly.) You can see my bushwhack on the map by the dotted lines.

In any of these streambeds there is always the possibility of some sort of rock formation, and there was a small one.

Creekside

And right across (but slightly up-stream) was an even better one that I carefully climbed up to.

Undercut

That’s really a lot of the fun of exploring off-trail in southeastern Ohio. There are always formations that very few people have ever seen.

From here, the return back to my car was fairly uneventful (aside from losing the Peninsula Trail at one point; a tree-fall obscured the trail and it took me a while to find it again). My trip north was, I have to say, mainly just plodding along while feeling pretty darn tired.

How did I hold up? Not too badly. My soles did fine (though being more sensitive to pebbles at the end). Somewhat surprisingly to me, my knees did fine. I ran out of water near the end, having taken only 2 liters for a 6-hour hike. But it was also encouraging that, despite not having done a lot of hiking lately, this was well within my capabilities, and I did not get particularly winded going up the hills. The only things that are really rather sore this morning are my inner thighs where my sweaty legs rubbed together as I walked.