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2018/02/16

2012 Ohio Valley Derecho

On June 29th, 2012, I was camping at Wolf Run State Park near the Village of Belle Valley of Noble County on the north side of Buckeye Trail's "The Wilderness Loop."  I was there to camp in an electric site.

I was sleeping my collapsible camper that I hand made for the back of my Chevy HHR, which I humorously call "The Cramper."  It was quite improvised.  That night, the nastiest windstorm that I had ever been in (in all my life) came through SE Ohio.  I think it started in the evening and I took shelter early.  It was bad.  But when I got up the next morning, The Cramper actually survived due to the system of bungee cords that mounted a large tarp to the back.

I broke camp and drove down to the Ring Mill Campground on the Road Fork Section, and then another site.  And that's where I found signs posted from NFS stating that the forest had been ordered closed by the forest supervising ranger and that anybody going beyond the signs risked a $5000 fine.  Since NFS was putting sawyers on mandatory overtime and advertising on the radio that anybody certified was asked to apply and would probably get hired, as I understood, NFS was not prepared for the magnitude of this storm.  I have a picture of this closure somewhere.


The Marietta Unit is an 85 year old older young growth forest.  And from what I could see, it took a beating.  When I became the Whipple Section (volunteer) Supervisor about 2 -1/2 year later, I had an indoctrination at the Wayne National Forest Headquarters in Nelsonville of Hocking County.  And they said that trees were down in dangerous ways and that their sawyers were fighting through webs of them.  If the hikers were to try and go through there, it could have been life threatening?  It ended up taking NFS that entire summer to reopen the BT/ NCT in the Marietta Unit of The Wayne.

I was reading a journal for Luke "Strider" Jordan, who was then a thru hiker on the North Country Trail, which are concurrent with the Road Fork and Whipple Sections - BT on The Wilderness Loop.  I was curious how he fared on his way through.  But in reading his log for Sat. August 24, he by-passed Road Fork and Whipple.  That was actually the right thing to do.  According to the closure, only the trails were closed.  But who knows what damage was done to the backcounty?  I wouldn't want be in there then.

Depending on who you ask, the BT/ NCT has about 45 miles of almost continuous off-road in the Marietta Unit of the Wayne.  If you eliminate the forest, there's nowhere else stated to overnight in the area.  I recommended to Buckeye that they put up a trail alert to shut down the Road Fork and Whipple Sections entirely, but that never got enacted.    But I am Whipple's supervisor now and under these conditions and for the record, I'd standby Strider's decision to by-pass it in my official capacity.

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