Me and my wife just completed highbanks metro park I think it was considered moderate . We did do about 8 or 9 miles on it . We are looking too step it up and possibly pack a tent and camp for a night any ideas on a good strenuous hike with pretty scenery and solid maps ??ideas or thoughts ?

My wife and I are JUST getting into hiking and live in the amazingly flat NW corner of Ohio. We went with our extended family to Lake Hope State Park over the weekend to stay in the cabins there and we found some really nice trails there! I was excited to hike in something other than a cornfield!

I learned a couple good lessons as a beginning hiker.

1. If you're the one the family tells to find an "easy trail for Grandma and Grandpa", don't trust trail reviews. Go and hike the trail yourself before taking Grandma on the trail. Although short and reportedly (on Alltrails) "easy", the Tulip Trail had some super challenging stuff for the elderly!

2. There is a difference between a "Moderate" trail designated for hikers and a "Moderate" trail designated for mountainbikers in a state park. The Yosemite Falls and Yosemite Ridge trails had some ups and downs as well as beautiful scenery, but the trial itself was well groomed, packed, and cleared, making it a lot easier to navigate than the aforementioned Tulip Trail.

Happy on Yosemite Falls

Yosemite Falls

After navigating what I told them was the "easy" Tulip Trail, the rest of the extended family declined to go on the hike the next day. It was just the wife and I as well as my two sons (the daughters also declined). It was a nice and easy 3.5 mile trail. We saw NOBODY out there and it was some great hills and forest!

Yosemite Ridge

We are planning another trip back in the fall when the leaves change color! The cabins were great and there are more trails in Lake Hope State Park as well as in Zaleski State Forest right next door.

Hello! Me and my girlfriend are coming up on our 3 year anniversary and I wanted to take her on a romantic picnic. She lives in Athens Ohio so I was wondering if anybody knew any good picnicking spots within about an hour or 2 drive. Of course, I’m completely fine with having to do a bit of a hike to get there as well. It doesn’t have to be SECLUDED but ideally it wouldn’t be super populated. Any help at all would be very appreciated!

I'm about to go on a day hike at Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Any tips for what I should pack, and anything I should definitely see or know?

Thank you for any help

I have family coming down in a few weeks and we were planning on everyone's kids getting together in my backyard for a camping trip to introduce my own kid to camping in a comfortable setting where she can easily go back to her own bed if she doesn't like it. However this summer I've been bitten by bats twice in my backyard and I know it's one if those things where the odds of even once are extremely low and I'm probably being irrational, but after talking about the situation with everyone coming over we've all agreed it's probably better to camp somewhere else.

The problem is I don't really know where. I've only been to one campground in northeast Ohio, the Mohican State Park campground, but when I was there tent sites were wedged between the main road and RVs and it was really noisy so I'm worried about the noise waking her up. Is there anywhere else in northeast Ohio that's fairly quiet at night? Even a more tent friendly spot in that park is good. If there's a playground and easy hiking trails that's an even bigger bonus.

We have backup plans and there's still outdoor activities if camping doesn't happen, it would just be fun to still make it happen.

Thanks in advance!

Trying to meet new people to hike with in the Lorain area, I don’t mind going solo for shorter hikes but am interested in joining a group or maybe starting one for some longer hikes. I’d love to get a regular Sunday group going for day hikes

I want to do my first overnight, dispersed camping trip, late August, early September. I've been to the area and camped at drive in sites but never backpacked. I'll be bringing all my water although I here Zaleski has water at some of the sites. A couple questions I have are:

Can I camp anywhere off the trail or only at the designated sights? I know fire is only allowed in a designated pits right? I won't have any food that needs cooked and will hang it way from camp

Thoughts on tent vs hammock? Besides weight I have both and don't mind carrying a tent.

Is AllTrails reasonably reliable for navigation when saved for offline use? I'm still looking for a map image I can save, but I hear people mentioning certain heads, markers, and such. I'm still trying to plan a route.

Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated! Thank you all so much!

Hi, so I'm brand new to hiking and I'm trying to find some good beginner trails here in Ohio. I'll also take any general tips or gear recommendations! Thank you all for any help

Hey all, are there any dreamy/picturesque/peaceful forests/ ponds to hike In the southern Ohio area?

I’m trying to find a challenging day hike, and this one looks like a solid option at about 10.5 miles with some decent elevation changes. With water station fill ups along the way and the lack of carrying a heavy backpack, this feels ideal on paper. Has anyone here tried this? Would you advise against it?

Hello, I am looking for a challenging hiking around the state of Ohio,Kentucky, Michigan, Southern Indiana and parts of PA. Looking mostly for day hikes up to 20 miles but if I can split up a longer hike that's fine as well. Thanks

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Where can I buy online larger scale printed maps of hiking trails in and near hocking hills and Wayne national forest?

I know when I'm getting ready to do these trips, recent reports are helpful, so perhaps some will find this useful. I spent two nights at Shawnee over the past weekend (May 10-12) and had a productive, pleasant trip despite rain and humidity, here's a run-down:

Total mileage: 26 mi*
Total vertical ascent: 5800'

Some background: I've done several backpacking trips in Ohio and out West, including a 2 week stint in the JMT, but I haven't been out in over a year, so this was a bit of a gear test and reminder of what I like/don't like. My pack was waaaaay too heavy, but even many years in I'm still learning what I need vs. what I want. I'm also an ultrarunner, so after setting up camp each night I did an additional 3-5 mi of trail running for training. I realize how this sounds--yes, it's "crazy," but it's how I like to spend my time. So all told I ended up with about 35 miles and nearly 8000' of vert for the weekend, which I felt was time well spent given the two hour drive from Columbus. Strava link here. This was also my first time combining backpacking and running in the same trip, and it went pretty well all things considered. I brought a Naked running band with me and used that with a soft flask on the evening runs after setting up camp.

Friday

View from the ridge. So much green!

Left Columbus around 2:30pm, got to the backpacking trailhead about 5:00pm (late!). Hiked about 7 miles into Camp 1 with. nearly 2,000' of vert. Whew! Quickly did my run and set up camp, made dinner, passed out. Everything was too wet for a fire and stayed that way for the whole weekend. The water drop near Camp 1 is about 0.5 miles from the camp, uphill, so I ended up filtering from the stream a lot (gear list below). Beautiful site among the trees here!

Camp in the morning

Saturday

Slept in ('cuz why not?), got up and made coffee while reading this incredible book ironically titled On Trails. About 10:30am, I thought "I should really pack up camp in case it rains." About 5 minutes later...there's the rain! So I ended up packing nearly everything back into my pack during the rain, but the trees helped keep some of it out. Just as I was about to leave, muttering to myself about waiting too long, I look over and see a group of ten fully Goretex-glad guys standing across the way, staring at me, hahahaha. I would presume boy scouts and their leaders, but unsure. They were after my site, which they got as soon as I took off. Those were the only people on trail I saw the entire weekend.

From Camp 1 I hiked around the entire north loop, stopping for water, food, and sun (dried out my tent) as needed, crossing the road near Camp Oyo, and continuing onto the south side towards Camp 4. I'd never been on some of these sections of the park, and it's all just so beautiful and secluded. Not the say the trails are easy--most of the grades are steep, rocky, and technical, and I enjoy that sort of thing. Further south there's a lot of logging and clear-cutting which has affected some of the trails, but the blazes and arrows are generally quite accurate.

One of the more open sections of the trail--these trails are often muddy.

Near Camp 4, in one of the more open areas where the backpacking (orange) trail meets the bridal trails, I encountered two aggressive wild turkeys. This was new to me. It might have been the same one, but given my hiking direction, I think they were separate. Both were female, and acted as if I was a true threat to their territory, squawking loudly at me, running towards me, and just generally being obnoxious. It was a little unnerving as most turkeys I've encountered in Ohio (from Hocking Hills to Pike Lake to High Banks) are generally timid and run away quickly. Not these guys--they were very upset I was there. I made a ton of noise and clacked my poles and yelled and eventually moved by, but it was strange, to say the least. Other than that, I saw no interesting wildlife (nor heard any) of any kind.

Camp 4 is also very cool, down a long hill and very close to its water drop. The stream was right next to me which made for a wonderful natural noise machine all night. After setting up camp I did another short run, going further south which opened up to a very clear cut section that I honestly found quite beautiful--the rugged logging roads make for great training, and the sun blazing down at that point, compared to the heavy clouds that morning. Camp was chilly that night, dropping into the high 40s, so I made my dinner and contemplated life by the stream. Below is a typical water pump near these sites--they are filled with (I presume) potable water from a tank usually ~100' away, and you push down very hard to use them. Some other ones have a different mechanism.

Water pump by Camp 4

I filtered these anyway, using a Larq bottle (UV light), but I also had a Lifestraw with me for water with sediment from streams--I didn't use this much as in the evening I was boiling most of my water for food anyway.

Camp 1 to camp 4 was around 14 miles and 3,000' of vert, and took me around 6 hours going at a leisurely pace with a heavy pack.

Sunday

Woke up early to very chilly conditions, but no rain thankfully. After packing up I hiked out partly on the backpack trail, and then cut over to a bridal trail to come out on Mackletree Rd near Roosevelt Lake. You can cross this lake (getting wet in the process) nearly the southern point, and use a faint trail to connect to the campground hiking trails. I had done this before, but then hiked on the road back to the main backpacking trailhead. this time, I went through the campground and found a wonderful bridge connecting the very end of the paved campground road to the hiking trails around Turkey Creek Lake. This bridge is not on any maps that I've seen, so I plan to add it to Open Street Maps which Gaia and Strava pull from with each new update. GPX file for this here. After crossing that bridge you come out near the damn and a beach, and then take the Lake Trail back to the backpacking trailhead. When I left on Friday there were 3 other cars in the lot (mine made 4), and when I returned on Sunday, just two (including mine). So, not a ton of use, even for a nice May weekend. Maybe the rain kept some folks away. The final push out was just over 5 miles and 800' of vert. I was home by noon, making this entire trip just over 48 hours from central Ohio. Not bad!

Happiest in the woods.

Gear

I'm a huge gear head, so I'll make this brief and am happy to field questions.

• Hyperlite Mountain Gear 55L "Porter" pack

• Hoka Speedgoat 5 trail runners

• Garmin Enduro 2 watch

• Black Diamond Carbon Z Poles (120cm fixed)

• Mountain Hardwear Strato 2 UL tent (MSR stakes)

• Exped Dura 3R pad

• The new Nemo "Moonlite UL" chair

• Everything else is pretty standard or a hodge podge of old gear

My hope is to inspire you to get out there and hike, backpack, trail run, or whatever. Shawnee is a really amazing place that I think is underutilized, though it was definitely a drive for many of us. But the trails are remote, rugged, and you'll find tons of solitude. Enjoy!

Looking for opportunities to hike and do dispersed camping near Hocking Hills state park. We’re staying one night in the park, then the next morning would like to do a 10 mile hike, camp on the back country, then another 10 miles back to the car. A 20 mile loop would be ideal. Or a 10 mile out and back.

Any suggestions? Anyone hike and camp Stone Church trail in Wayne National Forrest?

Looking for actual hills, mountains or ledges for a nice hike about an hour away from Toledo. Does it exist?