Starved Rock / La Salle Canyon

Week 1 in Ottawa, IL | Hiking to La Salle Canyon in Starved Rock State Park | February 2025

This was our third year in a row spending February in Ottawa, IL, and we were truly happy to be back here. The hotel is familiar and comfortable, with such friendly hosts, the town is small and friendly, there’s a nice variety of restaurants, and there’s plenty of opportunities for outdoor activities on our few days off. The one downside this year was that the winter weather wasn’t as mild as it has been the past 2 years, but we can look past that when we were blessed with a couple of months of being snowbirds prior to this. (Also, the alternative to being here was being in middle of nowhere Southeast Georgia, and even with the snow and cold we still see this as the better option).

On our first week in Ottawa, Curtis’ work days were on the lighter side, and he had a 3 day weekend as he adjusted to the night shift. Luckily this was also the most mild week weather wise, and we were the most motivated to get out and enjoy being here. During our first week, we enjoyed returning to some of our favorite restaurants — Rosatti’s for Chicago style deep dish pizza, BASH for sushi, the Cheese Shop for paninis and other snacks, and the Lone Buffalo restaurant for a group dinner. We also tried a few other new restaurants this week: Tapatios for Mexican (we each had a favorite burrito during this outage, and also enjoyed their horchatas and 1/2 off margs when Curtis wasn’t working nights), La Michoacana for fun Mexican desserts, and a newer sushi restaurant in town, Niku (which prompted us to start a sushi journal so we could remember what we like to get at sushi restaurants across the country!) While our first few days here were nice, we did have an ice storm one night, which thankfully didn’t impact Curtis’ commute the next day.

For our first day off here, we were excited to return to Starved Rock State Park and hike to a frozen waterfall. Today was right around 32 degrees, with overcast skies and a little precipitation off and on, but we didn’t let that stop us from getting outside. Despite having spent so much time here, there are still trails we haven’t hiked yet, so we turned our attention to them for this weekend. That brought us to La Salle Canyon today. We parked in the Parkman’s Plain parking area off of IL-71 and began our walk on the River Trail. After leading us deeper into the woods, there were several areas with steps leading down to the river’s edge. Curtis gave Charlotte a lift down the longest staircase. From here, the trail heads West following the river, but first I followed another side trail that lead back into the canyon beside the ridge we just descended — but there was barely a trickle at the ‘waterfall,’ so the main thing to see here were the tall canyon walls. (There’s another trail that splits off from the River Trail before it loses elevation, but that one was closed at this time).

Back on the River Trail, we continued walking towards La Salle Canyon, which was the next canyon over. We realized how fortunate we were that there had been an ice storm and now freezing temps, because it made the ground more solid, while somehow not being too icy. It was clear that since it had recently been a bit warmer, the trail had been muddy based on all the human and dog footprints carved into the mud. Today, we were able to walk away mud-free thanks to the ground being solid, crunching under our feet. The coolest part of this part of the hike though was listening to the sound of ice clinking against itself in the waves of the river, almost like a wind chime.

After following the river a ways, the trail started heading inland towards a bridge over a creek, and the trails to La Salle and Tonti Canyon. The trail going to Tonti Canyon was closed today, but if/when it reopens there’s supposedly a way to make a loop out of these hikes. For now, we just followed the creek back into La Salle Canyon. The trail rose in elevation gradually, the creek falling further and further below. The trail became a bit more narrow as it hugged the canyon wall, and I was especially thankful that it wasn’t either icy or muddy. Soon enough, we could see La Salle Canyon Waterfall in the distance, and right away we were pretty convinced that this could be one of the best hikes in Starved Rock State Park — at least under today’s ideal conditions!

When we arrived, we found the one thing that makes winter hiking totally worth it: a frozen waterfall! Everything about this was just so fascinating — the shape of the ice, the shade of blue, the intricate detail on the mass of icicles, and the contrast of the canyon walls surrounding us. This quickly became our favorite waterfall in the park, and best of all, we had it all to ourselves! We walked around on the ice, admiring all the little details, taking lots of pictures. I sent some videos to my sister to try and convince my niece (who is obsessed with the movie Frozen) that I was in Arendale and this was caused by Elsa.

All this led us to thinking about all the specific weather patterns that had to happen to grant us these views, as well as the trail conditions. Two years ago, we enjoyed seeing one frozen waterfall like this, as well as a few running waterfalls as the month wore on and the ice and snow melted. We didn’t really deal with freezing temps that year, and most waterfalls had a good stream of water flowing. However, most of the trails were completely muddy, and hiking usually ended with having to give Charlotte a bath at the hotel. Last year had been drier and warmer, so there wasn’t much of a waterfall or any ice to speak of, but at least hiking on the trails was easy. Now this year, there had been enough precipitation for waterfalls and enough cold days to cause ice to form, and somehow the trail (at least on this particular weekend) was solid enough from the cold, but not covered in ice. All this to say, we felt very fortunate to experience these exact conditions!

We retraced our steps back the way we came, back to the river and then up all the steps, running into a lot more people than we had seen earlier. It started to drizzle right when we returned to the car. Our takeaways from today’s visit hold constant to what we think every year: this is such a cool park hidden in the Midwest, we’re so thankful that we’ve gotten to see so much of it (and still have more to see), and we think it needs more maintenance to be able to keep the trails safe and open, even if that means implementing fees to visit. We hope the closed trails are able to safely reopen, and that we can keep returning here in years to come to enjoy this hidden treasure!

The La Salle Canyon Trail is 2.3 miles long, with just over 200 feet of elevation gain. If you’re interested, check out the Alltrails trail recording here.