LITTLE LYONS FALLS--

In the Mohican State Forest
the hard way

We started back the trail to Big Lyons Falls in the forest but aborted that plan when we met some folks who were returning from the falls and reported just a trickle of water flow; not enough for the picture I had planned.

So, when we reached the place on the trail along the branch of the Mohican river where the trail makes a left turn and heads up the ridge toward Big Lyons we continued straight along the river on an unmarked and slightly used trail.

I speculated this might lead to the outlet stream from Little Lyons; not knowing anything of the forest geography we might encounter.

We beat our way through the weeds, being very watchful for poison ivy, crossed a little stream I guessed might be the outflow from Big Lyons and continued through the weeds soon encountering another outlet stream.

By then we were within sight of the Pleasant Hill Lake dam so I was fairly confident this stream would lead to Little Lyons Falls and we began to ascend its trickling flow.  That's Sue (above) carefully making her way up the stream bed.

Our effort was rewarded with a view of the rock outcropping I could visualize as being part of the Little Lyons formation although I had certainly never seen it from this direction.  That's Sue above as we began to climb into fall's chasm, navigating her way over huge slump blocks of Black Hand Sandstone rock from the Mississippian Geologic Period of about 350 million years ago.

We also began to hear youthful voices of folks cavorting below the falls somewhere just ahead of us.  As we navigated around the slump blocks my line of sight disappeared into the darkness under the fallen, room-sized boulders. We slowly descended toward the playful noise mingling with the sound of falling water.

Our newly discovered young friends were from Bellevue, OH and camping in the nearby park.  Their noisy escapades were an exuberant reenactment of a Harry Potter story which ceased when they became aware of our presence, then continued for the photo above.

They had arrived at Little Lyons by the more conventional and heavily used trail from Big Lyons Falls and were surprised to learn we had arrived by trekking up the little stream from the river.  They were polite enough to avoid noticing that such a feat could be accomplished by folks of the geriatric set.

That's Sue (above) slithering cautiously up the slot we had descended to the base of the falls.  We then were confronted with the choice of exerting our way back down the stream bed to the river for our return, or...

...ascending the sheer rock face of the formation via the handy system of roots being used by the youngsters (above) as they simply returned to the higher trail the way they had come down.

So did we.