Shawnee Forest hikes

After my muddy run at Land Between the  Lakes I did some short hikes in Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois. My first foray failed: I drove a bunch of back roads trying to reach the Rim Rock area in the western part of the forest and after a lot of messing around and having to retrace my route I ended up on a road leading directly into a lake. The lake must have expanded with the flooding. 

The next day I took a better route and was able to hike the Indian Point Trail and the Rim Rock Trail, with add-on to Pounds Hollow. Both were in the deciduous forest and featured huge rocky bluffs pitted with holes. The trails went right under the bluffs. There were some impressive caves dripping away, and balancing rocks. The Rim Rock Trail came highly rated but I was alone there. I continued beyond the major rocks to the lake at Pounds Hollow. The lake was pretty but the beach looked rather forlorn, damp and deserted, although capable of holding a big crowd in high season. On the return to the car park the trail led between boulders on some startlingly narrow trail where even I could barely squeeze through. Is that why no one was there?

The second day I went to Giant City State Park and did two trails, Giant City Trail and Trillium Trail.  All these trails are hard to find even though the car park sizes suggest they expect loads of visitors. There were a few people around today and nice wintry forest. I like the thick carpet of brown oak leaves and that you can have views when there aren’t leaves on the trees to block everything out. Plenty of squirrels. The Trillium Trail climbed above a little creek.

I kept the highlight of the Shawnee Forest for the last day when I did the Little Grand Canyon Trail. Perhaps an overstatement to liken this area to the Grand Canyon but the trail was great. I started with a fairly level mile through the forest to a lookout from the top of a bluff towards another bluff. Below was a muddy river and much indication of flooding. There were a couple of guys there who were doing my loop in the opposite direction.

From the bluff I continued, descending gradually towards that same river, when I lost the trail and found myself among the undergrowth. I could not see where to go as the trail just stopped. But I did know the loop was possible since I had seen those guys. With the help of GPS on my phone I rejoined the trail and saw the sign that I had missed pointing towards a major descent on rock to the valley floor. This trail had come with some warnings, and as I clambered down I could see that, following rain at least, the warnings were not exaggerated. The rock was extremely smooth and slippery with lichen and water flowing all over it. This was actually quite hard going but lovely: the overhanging rocks of the canyon, mosses, little waterfalls, sounds of trickling water, pools. 

At the bottom I was back to dry forest, albeit somewhat muddy. I crossed a few creeks and wound through the trees, then had an ascent similar to my descent. Except that I didn’t miss the signs and the ascent was pretty much straight up a waterfall. When I found myself on the wrong side of the waterfall it was hard to cross it to reach a better path. Then I walked back to the car. It was an odd contrast, the dry forest and the very wet canyon. My trail shoes had dried out from LBL but are now soaked through again.