A New Year’s winter visit to Hocking Hills State Park in southeast Ohio unfolded under an overnight snowfall that left roughly a half inch of fresh powder across the landscape. Cold temperatures and slick conditions thinned the crowds, lending the park a quieter, more deliberate character. We spent several days moving through the hills with my partner and Theo, our cattle dog, following a loose arc between some of the park’s most distinct sandstone formations.

At Cantwell Cliffs, the sense of remoteness was immediate. Trails descended toward Buck Run, dropping into a narrow valley where rock shelters and sheer cliff faces closed in around the creek, its surface partly iced. Bare hardwoods along the rim opened winter sightlines across the gorge, while the lower trail emphasized scale, looking up at the cliffs from the cold floor below. Snow muted sound and slowed movement, reinforcing the area’s inward, seasonal feel.

A separate day was spent at Rock House, the park’s only true cave and a product of long erosion in the Black Hand Sandstone. The corridor-like recess, supported by thick sandstone columns and punctuated by window-like openings, carried a distinctly architectural quality. Archaeological evidence points to its use by Native peoples as a shelter and water-collection site, while 19th-century accounts later framed it as an outlaw hideout known as “Robbers’ Roost.” Reaching the cave required careful footing along snow-covered paths and short, icy climbs, a reminder of how weather continues to shape access to these long-used spaces.

We concluded our visit with a walk to Whispering Cave, hiking in from the Old Man’s Cave area along a gentle winter trail beneath cliff lines rimmed with icicles. The cave opened as a vast sandstone recess—nearly 300 feet wide—cut into the Blackhand formation, with a seasonal waterfall dropping roughly 105 feet into the hollow.

Together, Cantwell Cliffs, Rock House, and Whispering Cave at Hocking Hills framed our New Year’s trip as one shaped by snow, ice, and steady movement through a landscape defined equally by geology, history, and season.