In 1955, a 67-year-old homemaker named Emma Gatewood famously became the first woman to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. But her favorite path was close to home: a 6-mile jaunt from Old Man’s Cave to Ash Cave in the scenic Hocking Hills of southern Ohio. Locals now know the beautiful—and challenging—trek as the Grandma Gatewood Trail. Prehistoric glaciers stopped at this swath of the Buckeye State, and millennia of erosion left behind a dramatic Blackhand sandstone gorge with some of the Midwest’s most unusual topography. With the leaves down, winter is a good time to see the scenery, when the water that seeps, drizzles, and cascades down the rock walls in warmer months freezes, frosting the landscape with fairytale-quality icicles—the backdrop for the Annual Winter Hike…View Original Post