Twin Sisters Falls, Cuyahoga Valley National Park

Here in the Rust Belt there aren't a lot of places that offer a sense of wilderness but there's a chance of discovering it in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Crisscrossed by highways, pipeline clear cut right-of-ways, high voltage wires. Spotted with well rigs, ruined buildings and former dumpsites. Soaked in every kind of pollution and lorded over by sleeper communities that have ignored the Clean Water Act since they inspired it in the 70's, the park is often disappointing. Despite its many depredations, I still hike in the park because occasionally it is able to completely surprise you and the pockets of wildness in this urban park can transport you back to when Ohio was blank space on the map.

One of these spots is Twin Sisters Falls. One day this November, a few friends and I set out to find this "hidden" falls in the Pinery Narrows. We set out north from Station Road trailhead on the Towpath Trail, the park's busiest path.We walked about a quarter mile until we reached the "mudcatcher". A concrete barrier built to trap sediment from flowing into the canal. Here we forded the canal and headed up over the bank next to the mudcatcher. We followed the trail-less ravine as the creek winded between steep banks. Followed raccoon and deer tracks over snow covered gravel bars and crossed the creek on logs that filled the ravine in places. After half a mile of clambering up muddy side walls, glissading down leaf covered slopes to the bedrock creek bed  and crossing under dry waterfalls high up near the rim where little tributaries enter after storms, we reached Twin Sisters Falls where it drops sixty feet into a deep pit with shale walls. Only one "sister" was flowing but the spot is exceedingly beautiful and as the blanket of untrammeled snow winding up the gorge suggested, it's seldom visited.