A Comedy of Bear-ors

A Comedy of Bear-ors
Anxious for our third waterfall adventure in the Ozarks, like moths buzzing a porch light, Melissa and I decided to brave the recent June heat. Before stumbling across the threshold back into our air-conditioned home two days later, the trip would prove miserable, fun, hazardous, and fortuitous.

Is This a Day Spa?
After a late Friday start, we arrived well after dark at the Redding Recreation Area, a pleasant campground in a bend of the Mulberry River near Cass, AR. The heat and humidity were stifling as we set up our tent and climbed in for a nice sauna experience. The rowdy drunks on the other end of the campground rounded off the fun. I'm pretty sure we heard the smoke monster from LOST outside our tent in the middle of the night, loudly cracking branches as it went.

Breaking Breakfast
We roused early the next morning, peeled ourselves from our bedding and smeared on our hiking clothes. Cooking a campfire breakfast is typically a gratifying experience for us, but on this oppressively airless morning, everything seemed to go wrong. We are normally well-prepared, but in our haste, I forgot newspaper to help start the fire. Of course, we also forgot paper towels. Melissa tried using dry ice for the first time in our ice chest, and several of the eggs had exploded. Most of the rest were frozen. Oops, no butter either. I'm sure we forgot something else as well, but right now I can't recall...

A Blow to My Pyromaniac Pride
I am typically a crackerjack camp side pyromaniac, confidently mocking the "bubbas" who unsuccessfully try to light logs one quart of gasoline at a time, filling the surrounding forest with a sudden roar and a bright orange "Lord-of-the-Flies" glow that soon retreats back to a whimpering smoke plume, while my own, carefully-plotted blaze starts small and builds to a crescendo atop a beautiful bed of glowing embers.

But on this morning the oppressive, motionless air, combined with and my ill-conceived attempt to build the small fire directly under the iron CCC cooking pit grate, resulted in an oxygen-starved smolder that barely got any hotter than the surface of my forehead. I resorted to the bubba method (though I kept my shirt on), repeatedly squirting lighter fluid on the fire, but the rarely-used-and-therefore-old-and-brittle plastic bottle cracked down the side creating a double spew with every squeeze. Of course, it didn't really help, and the irony swarmed though my brain like the mosquitoes in our camp site. Wounded, but determined, I would not give up. The coffee never perked, but I managed to keep the invalid fire going by blowing on it as continually as I could without passing out, and were were able to cook the bacon and a few frozen eggs, which we enjoyed with our unbuttered "toast" and the aroma of sweat and smoke.

Blackberry Delight
Nourished, we set out to find Train Trestle Falls, supposedly a "medium" 3-mile roundtrip along a section of the Ozark Highlands Trail, accessible by a semi-remote trailhead. We didn't get far before we encountered patches of ripening wild blackberries. Very tasty, indeed. But the blackberry bushes quickly got thicker and the medium hike became a difficult bushwhack. Every yard of progress seemed to require two or three hard swings of my walking stick to knock down the thorny growth over the trail.

The heat was sweltering, even in the shade. The gnats and mosquitoes were unbearable. The going slow and tough. But we persisted. Oddly, one of our two bottles of water tasted really awful, and we realized that the CO2 from the dry ice in our ice chest had "contaminated" it. Leaving the cap open for a while let the CO2 escape and the water's natural taste slowly returned.

Apparently, with the vegetation so thick, we missed a turn described in Tim Ernst's book that should have led us off the main trail and right up to the lower side of the falls on a mile detour. Thus, when we arrived at the falls, we were directly above it with no apparent safe way down and no good view. Exhausted and overheated, we gave up and began the hike back, Melissa in the lead.

Black Bear Delight
CRUNCH! We stopped cold in our tracks at the loud sound that came from above us on our left. Looking up, I see a black bear cub shimmying up a tree 120 feet away. There beside the tree is an adult, who seems fixated on us for some strange reason.

"It's bears. What do we do?," I say, still frozen. We discuss it calmly. We're supposed to make noise, don't stare at them directly, don't turn and run, back away slowly. So I start backing away slowly, but Nature Girl Melissa is having none of that. She stands her ground, confidently unafraid. "We have to go this way to get back," she says, pointing at the trail before us. Another bear cub (we think) calls out in distress from further up the trail on the left. I'm thinking "Let's just do whatever it takes to go around them." Unbeknownst to me at the time, Melissa has also seen an adult bear move quickly down the hillside from our left and cross the trail about 60 feet in front of us.

Meanwhile, I'm digging in my pockets and backpack for any available weapons. I have a Leatherman with a two-inch blade and a slippery handle, and my hands are drenched in sweat. As I extend the blade and grip the stainless steel handle, I briefly imagine trying to plunge the ungrippable knife into an attacking bear but instead slicing my hand open. Walking stick in one hand and Leatherman in the other, I wait.

Suddenly, the cub scrambles nervously back down the tree and moves away from us, up the hill. Even though we cannot see them in the thick underbrush, we hear other noises that suggest the bears are retreating. After a few more minutes the decision is made to move forward. I take the lead and we start moving slowly while talking loudly. I was scared to death! Melissa was totally cool. No fair.

About 30 feet along, while passing by some very thick vegetation crowding the trail on the left, we hear two quick and threatening grunts from an adult bear that, while unseen, is obviously less than 10 feet from us, warning us to back off. We did not stop to take a picture. If I wet my pants a little, I'll never know because I was so soaked in sweat. We kept moving and making noise. I brandished my flimsy walking stick with faux bravado. A hundred yards later we started to relax a little, though our senses remained heightened all the way back to the car.

Summer Hiatus
The remainder of the trip was far less adventurous, and my next few fires almost burnt a hole in the ground. The heat remained unbearable, though, and we determined to wait for fall before undertaking any more waterfall adventures. Until then! Fritz

The Sidewinder Saga

Campsite Drama
Never again will we try to find a campsite in the Ozarks on Memorial Day weekend! Despite arriving at 3 p.m. on Friday, our original destination of Haw Creek Campground was packed. The much larger Long Pool Campground was full. The ranger said the only spaces left were in a horse and ATV campground called Moccasin Gap. Great, we're thinking, a testosterone camp, not up our alley. Actually, though, it wasn't bad at all. Except for the occasional entry or exit of ATVs, the campground was probably more quite and quaint than the others that were full of revelers.

More Than We Can Chew?
For our first adventure, we set our sights on a group of three waterfalls, Sidewinder Falls, Swamp Falls and V-Slot Falls, in a semi-remote valley along Bear Creek in the Ozark National Forest northwest of Dover, AR. This time we would be going way off the beaten path and descending deep into a valley into the unknown with some vague directions and GPS coordinates. We knew it would be hard. Tim Ernst's book said it was "not for the faint of heart." We didn't know we would consider giving up multiple times.

The morning was already warming up and humid when we left our car along a one-lane gravel county road and trekked along a short jeep trail to a small swampy clearing in the forest. The gnats and mosquitoes were intense. We were supposed to find an opening on the far side, but found no such thing, so we went around outside of the clearing until we found the steep drainage leading down into the valley that was indicated as our "route".

Edna Falls, But She Doesn't Feel It
We whacked our way through the underbrush, fallen trees and spider webs, walking through a thick carpet of poison ivy when out of the drainage bottom and climbing our way across slippery boulders when the trench seemed the most passable. Early on, we discovered a small unmentioned waterfall, about nine feet high, which we named Edna Falls, after Melissa's mom. From there, the going became more and more difficult, dangerous and slow. We tried to find a route above the drainage bed a few times, but were stymied by the steep slopes and poison ivy on both sides. We also worried about having the stamina to make it back up this difficult terrain.

Hard Rock Gaffe
With our GPS indicating we were a mere .15 miles from our destination, we found ourselves at an impasse. Melissa slipped on a slick rock and fell hard on her hip, striking her hand as well. She stayed down for a while, and I imagined how I was going to carry her back up and out. But she recovered after about ten minutes and decided to continue. Check out the bruise (right).

Sidewinder Falls
At last, having discovered a route on the eastern slope of the drainage, we reached Bear Creek virtually on top of Sidewinder Falls, an fantastic cascade down a corkscrew rock formation to a pool about 15 feet below the top ledge. It was cool and comfortable, so we rested above the falls at the water's edge and ate lunch.

Swamp Falls
In theory, from Sidewinder Falls we should have had a clear view of Swamp Falls, a straight falls from the drainage we just came down, dropping perhaps 17 feet to the pool below. However, a large tree has fallen into the canyon above the tree. We could see Swamp Falls, but couldn't get a great picture through the foliage, and couldn't figure out how to climb down to the base for a better view.

V-Slot Falls - Not Meant To Be, This Time
What promised to be the most exciting of the three falls, V-Slot Falls, which apparently cuts vee shape into the bedrock that joins in a deep crevasse, was not far downstream. We got close enough to hear it. But alas, exhausted and unable to see a way to safely reach it, we gave up and began the long haul back out of the valley. Turns out we had descended 580 feet in about a mile, most of that in less than a half-mile.

Kings Bluff, But Don't Fall For It
A quick dip in cool pool below the falls at Haw Creek Campground was just the trick before we decided to brave one more adventure for the day, a hike to Kings Bluff Falls east of Old Hwy 7 on Hwy 16. The well-worn trail was welcome and the bluff, falls and rock formations were fantastic.

More pics: http://www.facebook.com/#!/album.php?aid=172482&id=690593800

Check out our first attempt to record parts of our adventures on video...

Fritz's Birthday Trip 2010

So, to officially begin our adventures, we have to go back to a weekend in late March, 2010, when Melissa treated me to a surprise trip to Boxley area of the Ozark Highlands in northeast central Arkansas.

But first, I would like to acknowledge Tim Ernst, author of Arkansas Waterfalls Guidebook, among many other great books about camping and hiking in Arkansas. We're using that book as our guide, and we look forward to meeting Tim someday, maybe on the trail.

Oh, the luxury! Unlike our normal "roughing it", we stayed in a small cabin (Rocky Hills Cabin)...with a hot tub! My baby loves me.

Glory Hole Falls
Our first waterfall adventure was an easy, one-mile trek on a well-worn path to Glory Hole Falls, where a small stream falls directly through a round hole in an over hang. Pretty cool, but we arrived right as a photography club was swarming about.

Bear Skull Falls
For our next trick, we drove further south through Boxley to a remote trail head to the Ozark Highlands Trail, from whence we went on a hike of about 5 miles. But we mistook an ATV trail for the hiking trail and ended up slightly confused. Good thing we had our brand new handheld DeLorme PN-40 GPS to help us find our first big treat, Bear Skull Falls, a great falls about 25 feet high or so. However, we arrived from a direction that put us on a high overhang above the falls. Once at the bottom, we could see how little ground had actually been under our feet!

Slit Rock Falls
Further in, and off the main trail, we found Slit Rock Falls. Look at the picture and you'll see why. Apparently, the pool below the falls is a great swimming hole in the summer.

Caught in a Hail Storm
Beyond Split Rock Falls, we had hoped to bushwack our way off trail to one or the other of two remote falls, Discover Falls or Sunset Falls. We came within a quarter mile of Sunset falls, but the going was tough, we seriously worn out, it was starting to rain, and were simply not up to the task. Alas, they will have to wait for another day.

Good thing we turned around because less than 200 yards from our car, the rain turned heavy and small hail pummeled us as we ran through thick mud for safety. Reaching the car, we realized we had not retrieved a jacket Melissa left along the trail on the way in. So guess who ran back in the middle of a thunderstorm to find it?

All in a day's hike...