Route: Shawnee Ridge Trail (OH)

Location
Ohio, US
Distance
12.5 mi
Vertical Gain
2,800 ft
Description

The Shawnee Ridge Trail is a point-to-point singletrack through the Great Seal State Park near Chilicothe, Ohio. 

GPS Track

Comments

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I’m going to attempt to set a new FKT on this route this weekend.

I attempted this today, but ended up going off the Shawnee Ridge trail and on a mountain bike trail that parallels it. Advice for people trying this, there are a ton of blue blazes in the first 2.5 miles, but once you pass the big antennas, the blue blazes disappear for the rest of the route until you get back to this point on your return trip. Also, once you cross the second road, according to the map at the parking lot, technically you should follow the power lines to trail intersection DD, but the map on the website has you going into the woods to intersection R, skipping DD altogether. David followed the trail into the woods to R, which I think is reasonable, because the “trail” under the power lines wasn’t mowed and was as much a creek as an actual trail. My advice would be to do a scouting run before attempting this route, or to download David’s GPX file onto your watch. Anyways, as long as this Coronavirus doesn’t get too serious, I plan on heading back out to try this again in a couple weeks. It’s definitely a good route, the state parks just have poor trail markings in my opinion.

I tried it yesterday and got messed up at "R" as well, ended up at EE and realized my mistake. Quite muddy anyway and I was about 10-15 min behind FKT pace, so I gave up. Onward!