CUYAHOGA

This year for the holidays Christy and I traveled up to Clearfield, PA to visit her family. This trip was a bit longer than normal, so we had a good bit of leisure time. The Clearfield area has a lot of nice hiking options, but this year I decided to do something different.

When it comes to hiking, I generally don’t have “goals”. I don’t bag peaks on a list or anything like that. I prefer to go wherever the mood strikes me. However, I do make two exceptions to this. First, I want to visit every National Park eventually. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to some of the more remote parks, but it’s still a worthy goal. I also want to do at least one hike in every state.

This year I took advantage of an opportunity to meet both of those goals. Cuyahoga Valley National Park is located just south of Cleveland, Ohio. The park is 3 hours from Clearfield, which is a bit farther than I like to drive for a dayhike, particularly when there are so many other options nearby. However, in this case, the opportunity to visit a new National Park and do my first hike in Ohio compensated for the drive. In addition, my friend Dave lives in Cleveland, and he was up for joining me. That gave me a little extra motivation to make the journey.

Cuyahoga Valley National Park is a little different than most. It’s one of the newest National Parks, as it was a National Recreation Area previously. Prior to that, it was just a collection of regional urban parks and other public lands scattered along the Cuyahoga River. The National Park stitches those properties together into a preserve that focuses on urban recreation and historic preservation.

The Cuyahoga River is most famous for being so heavily polluted that it caught fire numerous times back in the 60’s. Those events were one of the primary motivations for the modern environmental movement and the Clean Water Act. The river is much cleaner these days, although it is still quite industrial in Cleveland. Farther upstream, in the park, it appears to be quite a bit more pristine.

The park features a wide variety of hiking options. I only did a little research before the trip though. One thing that I discovered is that the park and surrounding areas feature several waterfalls. This was a bit of a surprise, as I generally don’t think of waterfalls when I think about Ohio. http://www.gowaterfalling.com alerted me to Brandywine Falls, which looked quite impressive. The site also mentioned Blue Hen Falls, Buttermilk Falls, and several other falls in the area, including an impressive run of powerful cascades on the river itself.

Brandywine Falls was a must-see, so Dave and I made plans to meet there on the Saturday after Christmas. This particular day featured the nicest weather of the week, with sunny skies and temperatures in the 40’s. From there I planned a route down the Brandywine Gorge to the Ohio and Erie Canal Towpath, which runs parallel to the river. Once upon a time the canal connected the Ohio River with Lake Erie. The towpath is now a popular route for biking, walking, and running. We’d then cross a road bridge over the river to pick up the Buckeye Trail. The Buckeye Trail makes a 1,000+ mile loop around the state of Ohio. We’d follow it all the way to Blue Hen Falls. From Blue Hen Falls, a primitive trail continues downstream to Buttermilk Falls. From there we’d return by the same route, as this part of the park doesn’t have a lot of loop options.

I arrived at Brandywine Falls a bit ahead of Dave. I walked down the boardwalk, which leads to several viewpoints of the falls. The upper viewpoint has limited photographic potential. Unfortunately, the steps down to the lower overlook were officially “closed”. I’m not sure why, but my guess is that it was due to a little bit of ice on that stretch of the boardwalk. I guess we can always count on the Park Service to try to protect us from ourselves. Regular readers know that I occasionally suffer from selective illiteracy, and I was stricken with a sudden flare up just as I arrived at the sign. I crawled under the fence, descended the steps, and followed the boardwalk over to the overlook. And I managed to do it without putting on crampons.

There were four or five guys at the overlook when I arrived. I guess selective illiteracy is more widespread than I realized. They thought I was coming down to bust them, right up until I pulled out my tripod. We all had a laugh about that, and I took a few photos before hurrying back up to the main boardwalk. I didn’t want to get busted, either, as a ticket from the National Park Service would be inconvenient.

Dave caught up to me there. It was great to see him, as we’d last hiked together in Glacier National Park in Montana the previous August. We followed the loop trail over a bridge above the brink of the falls. From there we continued along the rim of the Brandywine Gorge. There were a couple of nice but unofficial views of the falls early on, but the light was poor for photos. I returned there at the end of our hike for more photos when the light was better.

Dave I descended a rocky trail into the gorge. This was an unusual hiking experience, as a local running group does a trail run here every Saturday morning. Apparently they had a strong turnout that morning due to the warm weather. We must’ve been passed by several hundred runners! Solitude is not one of the park’s strong points.

We descended to Brandywine Creek and crossed it on a bridge. We reached a junction a few minutes later, and picked up the Stanford Trail. We followed it to some campsites, the historic Stanford House, which is now a hostel, and the canal towpath. We then turned south on the towpath, hiking parallel to the old canal. We passed one of the canal locks before reaching the village of Boston. From there we followed a road past a book store and some shops to the bridge over the Cuyahoga River. The river was running full and fast after a couple of weeks featuring lots of rain and snow. From here we had a view of the Boston Mills Ski Resort. That was the only “snow” I saw on my visit to Ohio, as the recent warm weather had melted what had been on the ground.

We crossed two roads and picked up the Buckeye Trail. We followed it up and down several surprisingly steep hills. This was more of a “trail” than what we had hiked earlier – we only saw a couple of trail runners along here. This path stayed in the woods, but was pretty close to the Ohio turnpike. The traffic noise took away from the hike a little, but it was only a mild annoyance.

We eventually hiked parallel to another road before crossing it to reach a small trailhead parking area. From there a short hike brought us to Blue Hen Falls. Blue Hen Falls is a 20’ drop on a small stream. The first half of the waterfall is a freefall, with some steep, pretty cascades immediately below. The waterfall is down in a small grotto featuring an overhanging cliff. Both sides of the waterfall featured icicles and an impressive accumulation of ice. The cliff walls behind the waterfall are stained red from the iron in the rock. That red gave my photos an appealing splash of color. When we first arrived I thought the sunny conditions would diminish my photos, but the light was much better down in the grotto at the base of the falls.

There were a few people at Blue Hen Falls. We followed a continuation of the trail (beyond the “trail ends here” sign) downstream. Although it isn’t an official trail, it’s well traveled and easy to follow. There are three creek crossings along the way though, along with some tricky footing on one hillside. Fortunately we were able to rock hop Spring Creek each time without difficulty, despite the relatively high water levels.

Just before the brink of Buttermilk Falls we reached the remains of an old bridge. The final creek crossing followed, just upstream from a cliff adorned with an impressive display of icicles. We followed an old roadbed down to the creek, just downstream from the falls. An easy walk back upstream brought us to Buttermilk Falls.

Buttermilk Falls is a steep, sliding cascade, about 30’ high. It was mostly frozen, featuring a narrow stream of water surrounded by a wall of ice. Although it was a sunny, pleasant day, it was still chilly near the base of the falls. I’m sure it was at least 10 degrees colder there. Originally I planned on eating lunch there, but we decided to find a warmer spot in the sun. We returned to the old bridge, which provided a pleasant place to sit.

We had Buttermilk Falls to ourselves, but passed quite a few people on our way back to Blue Hen Falls. The return hike from there was quick and relatively uneventful. The only challenge was the abundant mud along several stretches of trail. The ground had thawed out in the warm weather, and heavy traffic had made a mess of the trails. A few of the steep hills were slippery, but the towpath was the worst. That part of the hike was almost like walking through deep, wet sand. I did most of the return hike in just a long sleeve t-shirt. I would’ve zipped off my pant legs and hiked in shorts if it hadn’t been for the mud.

We returned to our cars a bit before 4pm, about 5 ½ hours after starting our hike. For an encore, we drove over to The Ledges Picnic area, a few miles to the south. From there we did a short walk to The Ledges overlook. This spot offers a nice view from a cliff over the river valley and a nice chunk of the park. It offered a fine ending to a nice day of hiking. Cuyahoga Valley National Park had absolutely been worth the 6 hour round trip drive. The waterfalls were fantastic, and it was great seeing Dave again.

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