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Our winter photography workshop at The Holden Arboretum attracted 21 participants, who are seen in the photo above, standing at the top of Stebbins Gulch, just before descending to the left down a shallow waterfall which extends for several hundred feet downstream along the creek which runs through the Gulch. Usually this icy section is covered by a layer of snow, which makes the descent fairly easy, but on this occasion there was very little snow, and most of the terrain consisted of a mixture of flowing water and ice covering the rocky stream bed. In a few places, especially at the base of several short vertical sections of rock, the ice was quite thin and the water was more than two feet deep.

We were accompanied by two Holden guides, who led the group through the woods to a ramp down the hillside which is the access point for the Gulch. Jennifer Ault (second from the left in the photo above, wearing a red jacket) and Chris Rigby (next to Jennifer, in a brown jacket) are both certified Ohio volunteer naturalists, and in addition to scouting the trail and assisting the group they provided a wealth of information about the geology, animals and plants of Stebbins Gulch.           

In the photo above, seven members of the group are seen at the halfway point in the hike down into Stebbins Gulch. On the far left you can see a person descending the final section of the frozen waterfall before the stream flattens out and the hiking gets easier. This is also where the cliffs, and the icicles that hang from them, begin to increase in height.  

The photographs below, all taken by participants in the workshop, show some of the many facets of the winter landscape in Stebbins Gulch.