Trail Review - Ash Cave at Hocking Hills State Park

We started our weekend trip to Hocking Hills with an afternoon hike at Ash Cave. Just so you know, there is a bathroom at the parking lot for the trailhead (across the street in the bigger lot, not the small lot on the same side as the trail). Coming off the long drive, I was very happy to see this! This was a fun hike, short and easy, about a .5 or .6 mile loop. All the trails at Hocking Hills State Park are set up as one-way, and most people were following that. Not many were wearing masks, but it wasn’t terribly crowded and was outdoors.

I think you could get to the falls in a wheelchair or with a stroller as the path is wide and paved, but you’d have to turn around at the cave and go back the same way. After the falls there are stairs and roots to navigate and the trail is much narrower.

The trails close at sunset, which makes sense. Given the bridges and stairs on the second half of the trail, it’s far safer in the light. If you wanted to do a longer hike, many of the trails in the park connect and from the top of the loop you could join a 2.3 mile trail to Cedar Falls. This would be great if you have older kids or two cars. We just did the loop.

There were beautiful rock formations and the four-year-old had a great time sliding around in the mud so the back of his pants looked pretty nasty.

From photos posted on the Internet, it looks like there is sometimes a reasonably sized waterfall here, but when we were there, it was just a trickle.

The water does fall from pretty high up, so watch for it as you walk under that part of the overhang (aka cave).

When we were there, the pool underneath was not very deep.

The view is better once you get through the cave and look back on it from a greater height.