Trails & Ales! Quarry Trails Metro Park / Knotty Pine Brewing

For this event, we will hike the stone-cold coolest of all the Columbus Metro Parks: Quarry Trails. The park abuts an active stone quarry, and if you visit during normal business hours, you can literally watch them mine stone.

Here is a map of the Park.

* * * IMPORTANT NOTE ON OUR STARTING LOCATION

Quarry Trails has three entrances. You must go to the correct one for this meetup. We will meet at the Lake Area entrance to the park. We will not be meeting at either the Mountain Bike entrance or the Waterfall entrance. None of the Park's three entrances are connected, so be sure you drive to the correct one. The Lake Area's address is 2319 Quarry Trails Dr, 43228. Do not trust Google Maps to take you to the correct entrance if you simply type "Quarry Trails."

We'll hike around 4-5 miles, basically going around the perimeter of the park with some side jaunts along the way. There are some elevation changes, though, so this hike can be a bit strenuous at parts. It's more paved than not, and the unpaved parts tend to be well-graveled (which you might expect from a park carved out of a quarry). If there's a hike you don't need hiking shoes for, it's this one, although I wear mine anyway.

Quarry Trails has two Port-a-Potties at the Lake Area and one at the Mountain Bike Area. And the office/maintenance building at the center of the Park, which we'll pass a couple times during our hike, has public restrooms that are clean and nice, as well as water fountains. However, the Park has no shade. Be prepared!

After the hike, we'll head over to Knotty Pine Brewing, which has a reasonably varied menu of food options as well. The actual address of the brewery is 1765 W 3rd Ave, 43212, and it's about 7-10 minutes away from where we'll be at the Park. If you can't make the hike, we should be at the brewery by 5.