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Great Falls Hike (MD)

By Craig.

Two dozen members of Washington's Adventuring Group, a pretty typical turnout for their New Years Day outings, showed up at noon at Great Falls Tavern on the Maryland side of the Potomac 14 miles above Georgetown. Here is there trip report.  

"We first walked a short distance down the C&O Canal towpath and then strolled on the boardwalk across Olmsted Island to the Falls Overlook.

Here we lunched while enjoying the magnificent view and sharing sundry holiday treats, although a chilly breeze under overcast skies discouraged an extended stay.

We then backtracked up the towpath and through the extensive parking lots to a little-known trail, which we followed upstream through forests and across streams while keeping the lightly-frozen Canal on our left.

At a point where it seemed the trail looped back on itself, a couple of trusty scouts explored alternative routes.

As a result, we uncovered the correct trail towards the site of the long-abandoned Glory Hole gold mine.

Soon we had the rare experience of spotting a majestic owl perched atop a tree.

Unfortunately, an unusually large tree that had fallen across our trail, perhaps a victim of Hurricane Isabel in 2003, blocked our further progress.

One scout went out beyond the fallen tree but was unable to locate the Glory Hole site before running out of Park land.

But at least by now the sun had come out, the wind had died down, and temperatures had warmed to about 50 comfortable degrees.

Accordingly, we lollygagged for some time by the fallen tree and enjoyed more seasonal goodies before retracing our steps to the parking lot."

To learn more about the Adventuring Group, click here:  http://www.adventuring.org/cgi-bin/main.idc

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