It would be easy to say something to the effect that because of the global pandemic I wasn't able to have a grand 40 year old birthday celebration. But in all honesty, I know I wouldn't have done that anyways. Pandemic or no, I would have spent the day going on a hike, either by myself or with my family. This is what I've done for my past few birthdays, and it is probably something I'll choose to do again on future birthdays. When I get a day to do something of my choosing, it usually revolves around going outside and doing something I really enjoy. This year is no different.
My birthday adventure for this year was a geocaching adventure I found while browsing high terrain geocaches in the area. There aren't many geocaches in Ohio that require the use of climbing gear or rappelling down a cliff, but there are a few and one of them is only an hour away outside of Dayton. Clifton Gorge is a nice State Park/Natural Area that I visited with Levin during one of his school field trips last year. Despite the weather forecast calling for cold an overcast skies, I was excited to head out and do this hike and rappelling with my family.
We arrived at the trailhead around 11:00 and there weren't many other cars there. Despite not seeing that many cars, there were still a fair number of people on the trails. This park, in close proximity to Dayton, must be very popular as a weekend hiking location. The kids immediately started complaining about the cold, but once we got hiking they started warming up. We hiked along the rim of the gorge for a short while, then found a trail that descended to the bottom of the gorge, where I was able to find an Earthcache. Then we crossed over the river on a little bridge and made our way to the cliff that contained the geocache I was eager to try to find. The geocache, GC21RPK, had not bee found in about a year. As we approached the cliffs I tried to scope out where the likely hiding sots would be. The GPS coordinates were decent but there was still a nice 50 ft section of the cliff that would need to be searched, about 25ft either direction from my GZ point. I identified a few possible anchor trees from below, and then found the walking path around the cliff t reach the top and threw down the rope for my first rappel.
The cliff was covered in moss, dirt and small plants, and would not be good for rock climbing, at least not until you spent a lot of time cleaning it off. I swung back and forth on my descent, stopping to look in various nooks and crannies. The kids and Liz pointed out possible hiding spots from below, and also shouted up helpful encouragements. While I found several nice hiding spots, I found no trace of the cache or its decoy. So I walked back around to the top and re-set my ropes to try again. This time I set my ropes in a fixed anchor so that I could use jumars to climb back up the rope if needed. That turned out not to be necessary, as I spotted the cache at the bottom third of the cliff on my second descent, and whooped with delight.
After finding and signing the geocache, I re-set the rope to be more friendly for my kids to descend, and they took turns being lowered by Liz down the cliff. Levin is certainly old enough to learn how to rappel, but I didn't try to teach him today. Instead, I had Liz put him on belay and lower him. Same for Ada. This way the kids had more freedom to use their hands, and jump around on the rock. After the kids each took a turn, Liz hiked up to the top and rappelled down too, something she hasn't done in quite while. Despite it being very cold, we were all having fun playing on the ropes.
After we had our fun on the cliff, we continued another mile down the trail following the river, until we came to another bridge. Crossing this, we then could loop back to our car. All in all, it was a pleasant 4 mile hike mostly along the gorge bottom trails. We found some more geocaches, spotted winter birds including a highlight view of a pileated woodpecker, an chit-chatted the whole way. It was wonderful to be out with my family, all together, enjoying the outdoors.
