Piatt Park Gorge and Cave Area
Piatt Park Gorge and Cave Area is a breathtaking natural park featuring scenic hiking trails including a challenging loop with caves, waterfalls, and rock formations. The park is kid-friendly, offering a playground and picnic tables, and is popular for family adventures and photography. Trails range from easy to strenuous, with some steep and primitive sections requiring careful navigation. Amenities include picnic areas and seasonal restrooms, but the terrain is rugged and not wheelchair accessible.
Reviews
This hiking trail takes you back to a huge over hanging rock cliff, a beautiful little water fall, and has a sturdy set of steps to get you down to both. And the path is wide. It you want a more challenging hiking trail, Piat Park has that too, with a steep incline equipped with chains to hold and pull yourself up. So although i rate this as easy, you have the option for a more difficult trail held within this one. There is a playground and a pavilion before the trails, and even a bathroom that is open during the warmer season. I’ve gone several times now, in the summer and the winter, and used this stunning wilderness as a backdrop for taking senior pictures. If you are looking for an awesome hike, this is it.
It’s literally a little slice of another world. Such a great fun hike, good for beginners and the more advanced. Has a playground that’s very nice and kept clean and camping lots you can rent for very cheap with decent shower and bathroom access. And did I mention it’s absolutely breathtaking? Bring some lunch and make a day in the old growth Forrest and see the raw beauty nature has to offer for you and the entire family.
As we often do we found a new place to hike at Piatt Park located in southern Ohio and what an adventure it turned out to be!
First it’s an absolutely beautiful area with a deep gorge, steam, caves and gigantic rock formations to walk through. It’s listed as only a short hike of approximately 1.5 miles. But if you do the full loop it can get pretty strenuous quickly.
Our guess is that most people walk to the falls and then backtrack out which is wide and easy going. If you decide to cross back over the water as we did and take the zigzag up the cliff and back you will be approximately one step short of a mountain goat!
So here is my caution, even though we are a bit older, we do a lot of walking and hiking. This is one of the few times in our travels where I was actually worried about getting through without one of us getting hurt because it was so steep and in many places less than shoulder wide. It was so bad in one location that I literally threw my wife a rope so I could climb ahead and then she could use the rope to help stabilize herself as I kept it taunt!
Also the trails after the first part are not well marked at all and we spent a lot of time wondering if we were heading the right way even with the map.
In fairness to the park the second part of the trail is marked as a “Primitive Trail, and requires climbing on rocks and steep, slippery inclines”. They aren’t kidding around! What we thought would be a quick hour of leisurely walking turned into almost 3 hours of amazing beauty and some seriously treacherous locations.
I’d recommend it If you’re physically up for it. it’s a great adventure and a photographic wonderland!
Very impressed with Piatt Park Gorge and Cave area! A true hidden gem! While researching the most highly rated hiking trails in Ohio, I saw the pictures and read how this was so many reviewers’ favorite trail, and knew I had to hike this! I highly recommend staying to the left when you do this loop trail….that way, you will walk down the giant staircase and not up. You will have a nice little hill to climb coming up out of the gorge, but nothing too bad. There are several cave passageways to the left about halfway through that are pretty amazing. It took about an hour and forty-five minutes to complete. There is also a little playground at the trailhead, and plenty of picnic tables as well. Highly recommend this amazing trail that surprisingly, I don’t hear too much about! Go visit Piatt Park in Woodsfield, OH…don’t miss out on this hidden gem!
This park is absolutely phenomenal and breath taking!! Some parts of the trails were a lil shaky looking but we made it through all the way around. Checked out some of their caves and a few of their waterfalls. It’s even kid friendly. We had our 5 yr old, 6 yr old and our 12 yr old hiking the trails with us. The kids had a blast!..and there is also a play ground for the kids too… although I think they had more fun throwing rocks in the waterfall ponds. Haha. But seriously if I had the option to stay out there for an extended period of time, if not indefinitely, I would do it in a heartbeat!! Hands down!! So if you love being in nature or going on walks with a picturesque view…this is the place to do it!!!!