Upper Buffalo River, 2/2009

I had an exam the Friday before President's Day weekend this year, which means that for once I had three days and nothing at all that needed to be done over that time. So, of course, I decided to hike out into the woods, throw down a sleeping bag, and enjoy being away from Little Rock.

I decided to hike the Upper Buffalo River area, since I had only ever been to the lower portions with the family. It took me a few days to get the details of my trip ironed out, but here was my tentative itinerary:

Day 1: Day 2:

On Saturday morning, I got up and headed out early, and after about 2 hours of driving and missing an equal number of turns, I made it to Pedestal Rock Park. The highways leading up here were trashed; trees were everywhere and power lines were down across the road (all the traffic was just driving over them). The park looked about the same; limbs were everywhere, and the trails were impassable in a bunch of places. Here's the parking area:


The trails were in bad shape, but they had started to clear some of them. They still had a long way to go. I didn't even make it around the whole pedestal loop because of how messed up the trail was.


It was hard enough to get pictures in February... I can't imagine getting any good pictures after leaf-out. Being by myself, it was hard to give these pictures any scale, but I threw my pack into a couple of them for at least some idea.


I'm not sure how tall this thing was, but I did carry a tiny little backpacking tripod for my camera. I'm sure it would have been very amusing to anyone watching me try to set up my tiny little tripod, setting the timer, then running like mad to get into the picture.


There were a bunch of caves and cool rock formations in this area. Of course, I had to investigate.


This is why I didn't make it around the loop. The trail runs right along that bluff edge next to the fence. See it? Me either.


Once I got done at Pedestal Rock park, I went on to Alum Cove. The natural bridge and trails were in much worse shape than at Pedestal Rock, and I got even fewer decent pictures. Plus, there was some big hillbilly following me around and watching me, so I beat feet instead of hanging around for better pictures.


After the bridge, it was getting pretty late, and I was wiped out after climbing around over all those fallen trees and running from hillbillies, so I decided to skip Glory Hole and go to Whittaker's Point. Easy, right? Well, here's the 7 mile road I had to drive up there.
I think that this came close to a 45 degree angle. I wasn't sure my car would make it, but it was too late to turn around, and I wasn't going to back all the way down. I got out and tightened up my throttle cable to rev up my idle so I could just use the clutch to climb it. I was afraid to play the gas at all, because I might have spun a tire and cut it on one of the big rocks. I didn't take any pictures going up the road because it was getting dark. This is from when I was coming back down.

I got up the road right before dark, so I "made camp" and made dinner. I use the term "make camp" loosely, because all I did was throw down my sleping bag and set my pack down.
I took my Lafuma One Kilo Extreme sleeping bag (rated to 35, which was probably a stretch even when it was new 7 years ago) and my US military Gore-Tex bivy sack. It was supposed to be a low of 40ish with a 15% chance of rain. I should have known... it always rains when Troop 57 goes camping. It rained on me for half of the night and sleeted on me for the other half. My pack thermometer said it was between 20 and 25 degrees. Who knows if that's right, but my Nalgenes were frozen. I wore my US military long underwear to bed, and stayed warm most of the night except for my feet, which were freezing. My bag ended up wet from the neck up by halfway through the night because of the condensation inside the bivy.

The next morning, I hiked to Whittaker's point, or Hawksbill Crag.


On the hike back from the point, I found this neat little waterfall and nearly broke my neck trying to scramble down to it. When I got there, there was a tent underneath with people just starting to stir, so I didn't stick around too long.


Here's the ledge that kept trying to push me off the side of the bluff. Who knows how those people got their tent and all their gear down here... I was only carrying a daypack.


After I left the point, I swung on up to Lost Valley. This area was easier to get to and there were a few other people here. The trail was big and wide and well maintained (usually means I'd rather be somewhere else).


When I made it back to the waterfall, I understood why this is a popular place. It's really beautiful, and I sat there for a long time, taking it in. I felt so relaxed (big change from the normal grind) that I didn't want to leave. Then, of course, the whole balance tripod-run-camera falls over-repeat cycle happened when I tried to get a picture of myself. I finally gave up. Both of these pictures were taken mid-fall while my camera was falling off of a rock. Oh well. At least I didn't break my camera.


While I was at Lost Valley, I met up with some people who had just come from Kyle's Landing who told me that all the trails were officially closed, so I headed on back to Little Rock.
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