Hocking Hills State Park, Logan, OH: Ash Cave

Another really cool, beautiful hike we did at Hocking Hills State Park was the Ash Cave trail.

We did this hike in the later morning on Saturday, June 25th. The trailhead to Ash Cave was a little over 4 miles from our campsite near Old Man's Cave, on SR 56. There is a large parking area across the street (see map here).

If you follow along with the map I linked to, we took the red dotted line (the rim trail) to the waterfall, then walked down steps behind the waterfall and got onto the yellow dotted line, went under Ash Cave, and continued on the yellow dotted line until the parking area. We had two young children with us and were trying to minimize time spent on cliffs.

We had another beautiful day in central Ohio for this hike.

The trail very quickly leads you to another beautiful geologic landscape. (Cue my thinking about how neat this park is.)

The Ash Cave waterfall tumbles abruptly over the side of the cliff, 100 feet down to its own little pool.

You aren't supposed to get into the pool, but try telling that to a bunch of little kids who only see the best kind of playground. We were detoured here for quite a while (30-45 min) while sticks were sourced, tadpoles were chased, a frog was caught (and quickly released), rocks were dropped, and the falls were felt on heads/hands/arms/entire bodies. We didn't know this was here and were unprepared; if you are bringing kids on this hike, be more prepared than us and bring a change of clothes (and maybe shoes) for each kiddo - or be able to detour them from getting in the water altogether, since you'll know what's coming. One of the tiny humans with us looked like he jumped into a muddy swimming pool, and it derailed any plans for going a second hike at this time since we didn't have extra clothes with us.

The steps behind the waterfall (above photo) can be slippery and have a lot of dirt on them (making them more slippery) so be careful as you wind your way behind the falls and down by the pool. The slope is definitely apparent along the path to/from the trail. If you can't do the rocks or slope, you can do just the yellow dotted line from the map and you won't have anything to worry about.