HIKING
INFO & EVENTS:
Mt. Carmel Fault, Deam Wilderness
Attractions: geological, botanical anomaly
Time of year: Spring is outstanding
Length: 3 mile loop, mostly off-trail
Nearby: Blackwell Horse Camp, Hickory Ridge Blue Diamond
County: Monroe
USGS map: Elkinsvillea
Highlights:
If you're reading this and it's spring, run, don't walk, to your means of transportation and head to the woods.
Every woodland bloom and be found here--from early March's "harbingers of Spring" to April's spring beauty, adders tongues, twin leaf, and trilliums, then May apples and poppies!
Hurry, or these spring "ephemerals" will have come and gone--the wildflowers that bloom and then wither from sight, all before the trees leaf out and block the sun.
But what is really special: the blossoms grow in a geologic anomaly, a slip-fault, so noteworthy that I think it should be made accessible to the public with a designated nature trail.
This trail's name explains a mystery that knowledgeable hikers might notice--the origin of much of the botanic variety to be found along the stream.
Trail:
From the Deam Wilderness Blackwell Horse Camp (yes, hikers are allowed to use this facility), turn to your right after entering and park by the far (east) fence opening.
Follow the multiple-use (m-u; a.k.a. horse) trail east about a mile across successional saplings in former farm fields.
Keep left where the trail forks, proceeding through a planted pine plantation, then to Todd cemetery, where the trail turns left (due north).
After several minutes gently uphill, the trail levels off (ignore an illegal eroded horse trail going off to your left). Soon the trail bends sharply to your right (east).
Leave the trail just before the bend, bushwhacking down the hill to your left.
(All this means is walking without benefit of trail--there are no bushes to whack, just a few ferns and flowers to step around.)
You will see the beginning of a shallow ravine or hollow.
Wander down the tiny stream you see forming in this head of the hollow.
There are only snatches of trail as the hollow deepens and widens; you will find yourself walking the side of the hollow, its bottom, the stream itself, and an occasional path.
You are exploring within Indiana's largest earthquake fault!
Look closely at the first large rocks you come upon.
Almost covering them you will find a very unusual small, graceful, and rare (though locally common) fern, the walking fern.
You may not recognize it as a fern at first, as its small spear-shaped form elongates and attaches itself, then propagates in a new rosette of multiple fernlets in crisscrossing profusion.
This fern, which only grows on limestone, is a sign that the rocks in this hollow are remnants of a stratum different from the sandstones above.
Long ago, a block of this stratum slipped into this fault when the surrounding area was covered uniformly by limestone.
The limestone has weathered away on the surface now; these sunken remnants (called a graben from the German for "grave") tell the tale.
Two ways to prove this to yourself: pick up two rock shards and strike them together; this harder rock has a ringing tone, much different from the "clunk" of sandstone.
Also: you know that geodes are found in every Hoosier sandstone creek bottom; just try to find any here!
Studying a geological map you could identify the graben, formed actually by the Mt. Carmel-Heltonville Fault.
It has left the long, slim rectangle of surface limestone making up Frog Pond Ridge, where the horse camp is located, and a few nearby areas.
Identifying features: numerous sinks on the surface, springs on its sides, and caves.
Further south, where this stratum still exists on the surface, these features are common, a good example being Spring Mill State Park.
Downstream along the side of Frog Pond Ridge you will find all the most beautiful April wildflowers--hepatica, twinleaf, wood anemone--and miniature waterfalls and rock bluffs.
If you reach the bottom after a rain, you will hear a marvelous spring ahead of you coming out of the side of the ridge, and nearby see the white limestone stream bed flattened, transformed into a likeness of an ancient Roman chariot way.
To return, you have several options.
The quickest and safest for the inexperienced: retrace your steps.
Second, downstream near the wide mouth of the hollow, to your left you will be able to find the old hike/horse trail up the near side of Frog Pond Ridge.
Follow it up to an informal Frog Pond Ridge trail (supposedly closed to horse use.)
Follow this trail straight south back to a disused trail behind the horse camp (also supposedly closed to horses).
Turn right, watch for a footpath on your left in a few hundred yards, which will lead to the horse camp.
(This whole trail sequence was closed in 1995 due to destruction of this area by user-installed horse trails.)
Third, continue downstream to an official loop of the m-u trail.
Turn left, and follow it around the end of Frog Pond Ridge, across Saddle Creek, and back up the far side to the horse camp (this route is a mile or two longer).
After heavy rains, these streams can be too full to cross, making the latter two options unavailable.
For years, efforts have been made by the author get the HNF to make a developed, designated Mt. Carmel Fault hiking trail a part of the Deam trail system, to no avail.
Nearby:
You are surrounded by designated, eroded HNF multiple-use (de facto horse) trails emanating from Blackwell Horse camp.
In winter time when the mud is frozen you may be able to walk on them.
Access:
From Rt. 446 (11 miles south off Rt. 46, just east of Bloomington), watch for the Deam Wilderness sign on your left at Tower Ridge Road, 1 mile past the Hardin Ridge Recreation Area.
Follow Tower Road a short distance to the Blackwell Horse Camp.
Read about other trails:
