09.01.24: Hocking Hills falls

It’s been a few years since I’ve headed to Ohio’s Hocking Hills for a photo hike. The reason has more do to with busy schedules than with any lack of interest in seeing the unique geology of the area. 

The 90-minute drive from our Ohio home to the Hocking Hills makes it more of a planned-in-advance photo destination instead of a the-weather-is-nice-this-morning destination like the parks much closer to our home. Plus I need to arrive at Hocking Hills parks before daylight to have a chance to photograph areas without a mass of people in the way, which means leaving the house about 5 in the morning for the drive. I’m getting too lazy to do that.

But I really need to plan another visit.

I grabbed this photo of the lower falls in Hocking Hills State Park during a visit a few years ago. It’s one of many waterfall photos I’ve captured in that region.

The Hocking Hills is a great area for photography. Its terrain is much different from the mostly flat land in other areas of Ohio. Blame it on the Wisconsin glacier that covered Ohio from 85,000 to 11,000 years ago. It flattened the area, but southeastern Ohio was outside the glaciation of the ice age and remained ruggedly hilly and forested.

The same glacier that flattened much of Ohio is responsible for creating the Hocking Hills, one of the most geologically unique – and photogenic – areas in Ohio. The ruggedly hilly section of southeastern Ohio features gorges, cliffs, caves and waterfalls created when torrents of water from the melting glacier rushed through that area.

According to Wikipedia: “When the glacial torrents found cracks in the hard capstone, the water poured through to flush out the soft middle layer. This left long tunnels where the gorges are today. Eventually, the weight of the tops caused them to come crashing down. The ‘slump rocks’ in the gorges today are what’s left of the hard top layer. In just a few centuries, the rushing waters of the glacier carved the soft middle layer of sandstone into the myriad dimples and wrinkles that decorate the cliffs and grottos today.”

The waterfalls, deep, rocky gorges and towering, forested hills make Hocking Hills State Park one of my favorite areas for photography. 

Old Man’s Cave Trail, where the lower falls is located, is named for a hermit who lived in the large recess cave in the gorge around 1800. It’s a beautiful gorge that features several large waterfalls, a series of rapids and small waterfalls and the gigantic cave that gave the park its name. The cave is located on a vertical cliff about 75 feet above the stream and measures 50 feet high, 200 feet long and 75 feet deep. The trail, like others in the region, is filled with large slump rocks in and around the stream.