Date: 2012-02-01
To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0

During January I had I had a chance to hike a section of the 24 mile Adventure Trail located in the Harrison-Crawford County State Forest. I drove to Corydon, Indiana to check out the ¢longest trail¢ in the Indiana State Park system. The Harrison-Crawford State Forest has evolved and now includes O¢Bannon Woods and Wyandotte Cave. Oddly, the caves have been closed indefinitely to protect the cave bats from White Nose Syndrome.The weather as I arrived was sunny with deep blue skies and a brisk January wind. As I drive into the entrance of the Park, I stop at the Park Office and ask for a Trail Map. What the very nice fellow attending the desk hands me looks like a black and white copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of an outdated map. I take a look at it and sort of grimace as it looks like this won¢t be much help. I ask a few questions of the attendant and he tries to be helpful but it¢s obvious he has never been on the trail and is not too familiar with it. So I walk out to my car and take a gander at a colored map I had printed from a website. This map is slightly better than the one from the park. But while it shows most of the park features and some of the road names, oddly the Adventure Trail traces of off the map so about 1/3 of the trail is not on the map. This is very strange. I carry a GPS so I decide to take my chances. I drive on a Park road called Cold Friday Road to a place called Pioneer Shelter. Here is where I can access the Adventure Trail and it appears to be close to the Blue and the Ohio River. The Pioneer Shelter house looks in decent shape. There is some picnic tables scattered about and the shelter features a huge field stone fireplace. Today I will day hike only so I can get a feel of the trail. Off to the left I see the Green and White blazes which serve as trail markers. I saddle up with my daypack, some snacks/water and a GPS. As I climb the trail the elevation increases about 250 to 300 feet. You can see deep into the hardwood forest due to the bare trees. The trail is hard to see in some spots and it does not look to be used very used. I am heading northwest. There are several large trees down (a.k.a.) blow downs across the trail and it looks like trail maintenance has been lax. I walk for about 90 minutes and come to a trail intersection that is not marked. I gamble and take a left. There are no blazes and soon I end up in the Horse Campground. I pause to look at the map and the best that I can tell is that the trail skirts around the campground. I probably should have turned right instead of left at the trail junction. While I¢m in the campground I check to see if any of the restrooms are open. I find an open restroom with running water in A-Section so I stop here to take a break. The restroom is filled with dead, brown leaves and trash but at least the water is working. I head back out to see if I can pick up the trail but just past the junction I find only a horse trail. So I follow that trail for about 30 minutes. After walking for about 30 minutes, I notice that off to the left there is a green and white blaze on a post that is lying against a tree. So I bushwhack for about 100 yards and find what I guess to be the trail. There is a path to follow but I walk another 30 minutes before I see another trail marker. Due to the time, I decide to turn around and head back to my car. I miss a turn again but end up going in the right direction toward my car. Rather than backtrack to see where I missed a turn, I just stay on the horse trail. I don¢t much care to hike on trails used by horses because the trail is usually pretty rough especially where there are wet spots. From what I can see, horses tend to exacerbate trail damage in that their deep hoof tracks tend to hold lots of water and cause the trail to stay very wet and muddy. I finally reach what I bet is Cold Friday Road. Sure enough my GPS confirms it. So I turn right and head back toward my car. As I reach my car, I see that the Adventure Trail heads in a southward direction in addition to the north that I had taken initially. Since I have some daylight left, I decide to head south on the trail and see if I can get a view of the either the Ohio or Blue River. The trail meanders down to a dry stream bed. One thing I have read is that there are no water sources along the Adventure Trail and this proves to be true as the streambed is dry as a bone. Off to my right as I begin to climb there are some cool looking white and brown limestone cliffs and outcroppings. As I continue to climb, the trail evolves into a horse trail again and the going gets very muddy. Finally after about a mile of climbing and sinking into sticky black mud, I see the Ohio River. I pause to watch a barge push loads of coal downstream. The waves on the muddy brown river that are coming off the barge lap the shoreline and I wonder where the coal is headed. I continue up the trail and the mud continues. I decide to stop after 2 miles and head back to the car. On my way back, I miss a turn again and find myself on another Horse trail.Shortly before I reach Cold Friday Road again, I see a sign that tell me sections of both the hiking trail and the horse trails are closed due to logging. Once on the road, I turn right and reach my car after about a mile. The road is so easy to walk on after slugging through mud. I reach my car, take a break, and decide to then head out. As I leave, I take drive on another section of Cold Friday Road. After about 4 miles I happen on the area where logging is taking place. There are huge log trucks and heavy duty skidders working like there is no tomorrow. I see several loads of logs ready to be taken out to their destination which I bet is a sawmill or a veneer mill. The Adventure Trail is not what I had hoped for. On the 8 mile section that I was on, it was not particularly scenic other than for some nice views of the Ohio River and some cliffs and rock outcroppings. Perhaps in the fall with leaves changing colors or later in spring with dogwoods and red bud trees blooming - it may be more colorful. I¢m quite sure that it would not take very much to improve the Adventure Trail by updating the blazes and by providing reliable maps. (Or maybe I need to change my name to ¢Wrong Way¢ as I lost the trail several times.) The other issue preventing overnight stays is the lack of water sources. No one likes the extra weight of taking a 2 or 3 day supply of water. From what I saw of the Park, it must be pretty low on the totem pole when it comes to funding. That is too bad as I think the trail usage would improve as the trail would be updated. I would like to come back to do an overnight hike once the weather is slightly warmer.