My friend Travis Sayler, with whom I've planned many a backcountry excursion, has been telling me for several years that I need to go see the Buffalo National River area in northern Arkansas. I've honestly been a bit skeptical, because I've canoed another section of the same river before, and though that section was certainly scenic, it didn't exactly make the Life List category of places you have to visit before you die. However, Travis persisted. Randy Joe Bland also told me of a place in this wilderness area called Big Bluff, where one walks along a narrow cliff ledge 500-600 feet above the river. I began to get intrigued - I'm a sucker for sweeping vistas. Travis mentioned a cave with a waterfall inside. I got a bit more interested. Travis also mentioned Hemmed-In Hollow Waterfall, the highest waterfall between the Rockies and the Appalachians. I agreed to the expedition.
So in late April, despite forecasts calling for rain every day of the trip, five of us - Travis, Brandon Speak (my brother-in-law), Kevin Allred, Drew Ryan, and me - converged on Lost Valley Campground just west of Ponca, Arkansas. That afternoon of Day 1 we hiked the mile-or-so to Eden Falls, beside which is the entrance to Cob Cave. The falls themselves are quite beautiful, but the highlight to me was the cave. A few feet inside the entrance the ceiling gets lower and lower. We crawled in muck and bat guano (the bats themselves were often in evidence) under a low ceiling for about twenty yards beside a rushing stream coming from deeper in the blackness of the cave ahead of us. Then, as the noise of rushing water grew steadily louder, there was a tight squeeze through a claustrophobic spot, and suddenly I felt a sense of space and roominess. I turned around and shined my headlamp upward, and laughed aloud. The roar of rushing water was coming from a waterfall that fell from the middle of a high domed ceiling about twenty-five feet over our heads. It was a bit of a surreal moment for me. Even though this was a readily-accessible cave (we saw families with young children successfully navigate the same passage), it had the sense of a pirate treasure cave or the hideout of an Old-West outlaw. I could imagine looking over in the corner and seeing a bleached skeleton fastened by a rusty cutlass to cracks in the rock.
That night we "car camped" at Lost Valley. Then in the morning of Day 2 we loaded up the cars again and drove a few miles to Steel Creek, one of the popular put-in points for canoe floaters and our trailhead for the trip.
There, surrounded by high bluffs with leaky clouds socked in overhead, we made final adjustments to our packs, locked up the cars, and hit the trail. After just a few hundred trail yards, signs of civilization had completely disappeared. I commented to Travis that this was "good trail." He knew what I meant. Good trail doesn't necessarily mean that the trail is well-maintained or even safely banked on steep slopes. It means that it's a narrow track through areas where evidence of civilization is minimal, where the scenery is good, where the noise is all nature noise... It's a bit hard to define, but this was good trail. The steady dripping of recent rain water off the leaves, the misty feel to the air, and the deeper green that a cloudy day imparts to a deep forest didn't hurt. I was pleasantly surprised to find such a place in Arkansas.
It was definitely not easy trail. We had had two choices for hiking. We could have taken the Old River Trail (ORT), which follows the river and fords it about once or twice per mile. The ORT is fairly free of steep climbs and knee-testing descents. The newer Buffalo River Trail (BRT), however, stays feet-dry along its entire length (or at least it does in the Western section of the Buffalo National River area), but incorporates repeated strenuous climbs and descents. In view of the fact that this was early April and the water was still considerably cool (and also in view of the fact that this was the same group that in the two previous years hiked in the Great Smokies and the Grand Canyon), we chose the BRT. The BRT also recommended itself to us because the occasionally brutal climbs sometimes reward the hiker with an overlook in full wide-screen, hi-definition spectacularity.
We hiked without incident for several hours, with Kevin Allred consistently in the rear, especially on the climbs. He freely confessed that he had just found out about the trip a few days before we departed, and therefore had done zero conditioning. "I'm just gonna be slow," he said. So when, after our first big climb, it became evident that there was another major climb in the offing, we made sure Kevin had enough water and then told him that at the next trail junction we would leave a map and make an arrow with rocks showing which way to go. Then we headed on up the trail. You, gentle reader, may criticize this decision. You'd probably be correct in this criticism. But Kevin was eager to avoid being a hindrance to us, and we respected his prowess in the wilderness. Also, if you've done significant hiking carrying a full pack in steep terrain, you know how important it can be to your endurance to be able to stay in the rhythm once you hit your stride on a climb. Frequently stopping or pausing to wait for stragglers is the last thing you want to do when you have a good pace going. All this reasoning was sound, but disastrous. I'll come back to that in a bit.Brandon and I kept a good pace and pushed out considerably ahead of the others, and reached the top of the last hard climb on the 7.2 miles of our first day breathing hard, but otherwise feeling pretty saucy and full of life. (If you're the geographical type and want to see what I'm talking about on a map, go here and zoom in on the left side of the upper section of the main map.) At that point we had a little over a mile and a half to go, all of which was descent. So we stepped out eagerly, heading for the junction with the ORT at Horseshoe Bend, where we planned to set up our base camp for the next few days. The descent went quickly, and soon we took a left turn and joined up with the ORT, which here seemed to follow an old wagon trail's wide, straight, rutted track northwest toward the river. The deciduous forest turned to tall pines, which gave a spongy floor of needles to walk on.
Two tenths of a mile later, we found our destination. We started to glimpse an open area through the pines ahead. We came out of the forest onto a wide, flat rock shaped roughly like a football, about fifty feet wide and maybe three times that long. On the southwest side to our left, one of the points of the football pushed out directly over the clear blue-green of the Buffalo River, forming a bluff about thirty feet off the water. This, the west side of Horseshoe Bend, was home for the next few days: unlike our previous expeditions in which we backpacked point-to-point or in a large loop, this trip was a base-camp-with-daily-excursions setup.
We decided that the perfect place to camp was just off the eastern edge of the rock under the shade of the pines. We took off our packs, stretched, rested a bit, and then started setting up camp. Travis and Drew had brought lightweight hammocks made of something similar to parachute cloth. They were very excited about hammock camping. They kept saying things like, "It's lighter to carry, much better ventilated, more comfortable..." They had lightweight tarps to rig over their hammocks to keep the rain off, and I don't mind admitting that at first I was just a bit envious. I have two great backpacking tents I've written about before here - one an REI Half Dome 2-man and the other a Big Agnes Muddy Slide 3-man. Both my tents are very lightweight and bombproof in extreme weather, but the hammock system seemed ideal for warmer-weather backpacking.
Brandon pitched the tiny solo tent he was using for the week nearby. I waited to start setting up my tent, because Kevin Allred was carrying the tent fabric while I had the poles and stakes in my pack.
When we had set up camp to this point and eaten a snack, we noted that Kevin Allred still hadn't shown up. We wondered if he'd taken a break to eat his lunch. Then we went to the bluff over the river and spotted a good place to jump off the bluff into the water. The water was very clear, and when I tossed in a rock I could see it take time to fall all the way to the bottom. Brandon climbed down and swam over to the spot, and noted that he couldn't touch the bottom without making a serious effort to dive down and do so. He also mentioned that the water was a bit chilly. But we decided we had found our diving board. I went first, and made the plunge after stalling for only a little bit. The dive was great, the adrenaline rush was wonderful, and the shock of the cold water revived my tired muscles. 
And it was cold water.We swam for a while, then dried off and started wondering when Kevin would show up. After I ate a little, I decided to go look for him. I took a couple of granola bars, a full Nalgene water bottle, and a map, and headed back up the trail. I told the guys exactly where I was going and the route I was taking to get there. I hoped to find Kevin in the first mile and help him carry his things back to camp. No luck. I ended up hiking all the way back up the hill of the last descent of earlier that day. It was 1.7 miles and lots of elevation gain to the last trail junction, where we had left Kevin a water bottle and a map. I decided to go at least that far, and see if the items were still there, which would mean that Kevin hadn't made it to the junction. The bottle and map were gone, our directional arrow made of rocks was still intact, but no Kevin. I started to get worried at this point, but not too badly. Kevin had water and a map, and enough food and equipment to survive for more than a week if he had to. There were also roads and trailheads within an easy day's hike in any direction, so he shouldn't have to do more than spend a night on his own unless he were seriously injured. I headed back down the hill, keeping my eyes open for signs that Kevin had turned off the main trail or left us some sort of indication where he was going. At this point I was seriously tiring. I had hiked the seven miles with a full pack, and then after a rest had blasted back up the hill after eating two granola bars and some trail mix. I drank the rest of the quart-size Nalgene I was carrying, but my legs muscles started trembling and I could tell I wasn't going to be able to do much more searching. I headed back to camp. When I got there, we discussed our options. We knew that Kevin was in an area bounded by the state highway on the south and by the river on the north. As long as he stayed on trails (and we were fairly confident he was smart enough to do that), we knew we could find him within a day or so. For now, we were losing daylight, so Travis and Drew just did a little more searching close to camp, to no avail. We were all a bit discouraged when night fell and Kevin still hadn't shown up. But we knew that Kevin was capable in the wilderness, so after praying about it, we felt he was in good Hands and went to bed, ending Day 2.
That night, since I had no tent, I put my Therm-A-Rest and sleeping bag on a tarp on the ground under Drew's hammock, hoping his rain-fly tarp would keep me reasonably dry in case of rain. That's why in the picture above you can see my orange Therm-A-Rest and blue-rain-covered pack on the ground tarp under the hammock on the right. Fortunately, that was the one night of the trip where there was no rain. However, in the middle of the night, we got a nasty surprise. I was dreaming peacefully, when suddenly in the middle of the dream there was a sound like a pistol shot and a loud yell. Then Drew suddenly came down on top of me. I came instantly awake, adrenaline pumping and my throat a little sore from my instinctive yell of terror. "My stupid hammock broke!" Drew said. Then when we realized what had happened, we both started laughing. Travis and Brandon peered through the darkness at us.
After a bit, Travis said, "Dare I ask what just happened?" We got a flashlight out and ascertained that the steel S-hook that was connecting the hammock to the nylon strap that goes around the tree had snapped. This was surprising, because the hammock, straps, and all were guaranteed to 350 pounds of capacity, and Drew is far below that limit. He hadn't been swinging, bouncing or anything either. So Drew threw the hammock down beside me on the ground tarp and slept the rest of the night there.
The morning of Day 3 we awoke, brewed coffee (a non-negotiable morning starter on all trips involving Travis, Drew or me), and discussed plans to find Kevin. We tentatively agreed that the most likely scenario was that Kevin had been unaware of how close to camp he was at the last trail junction, and had decided that he couldn't make it and had therefore gone back to the cars. We were prepared to be frustrated with him and make fun of him mercilessly for this perceived wimping out. Travis had left three inner tubes at the vehicles at Steel Creek, a little over four miles upstream via the ORT. He and Drew and Brandon decided they would take a light pack and hike the ORT back to the vehicles, and then inflate the inner tubes and float back to camp. If they didn't find Kevin, we would search downstream if enough daylight was left to permit it. My jaunt back up the ascent the previous evening had seriously sapped my energy, so I decided to be the one to stay behind at the campsite for the day.
We were expecting Kevin Askew, another companion of previous adventures, to join us that day - he hadn't been able to come the first day, and therefore we had pinpointed on a map where we would be, and he was going to hike over the hills from the north and cross the river to join us. I sat in Travis' hammock (after carefully inspecting the hardware!) and read most of the morning, glad that I had recently downloaded to my phone the newly-published Tolkien book The Children of Hurin, which turned out to be a very good read, if a bit depressing. I kept my eyes and ears open for both Kevins.
A little before noon I heard someone calling, "Hello, the camp!" I turned and saw Kevin Askew striding confidently in (of course - he had no ascents in his hike of the morning). I got up and helped him stretch his own hammock (what IS it with these bandwagon trend-followers?) and filled him in on the sequence of events. After we ate lunch, we decided to try a little fishing by our bluff. Travis had packed in a light rod that was still strapped to his pack, so I assembled it and tied on a crappie jig. Kevin had a pole as well. Kevin caught a couple of decent-sized fish. I had one on twice (it was crazy - you could see the fish hit and everything in the clear water) and lost them both. The rain started falling around that time, and I got out my nifty new Marmot PreCip rain jacket, the one new piece of gear I had bought for this trip. I very shortly decided that I liked that jacket a lot. (Later experience reinforced that first impression. Strenuous hiking will make it steam up inside for sure, but it breathes remarkably well for a jacket that will keep a torrential downpour off you. As I've said before about various items, I'm not getting paid by Marmot to say nice things about their jacket, but I'm definitely willing to discuss offers!)
After we had been fishing for perhaps an hour, we heard an extremely welcome sound. It was that of FOUR familiar, cheery voices coming down the ORT across the river from us. Travis, Drew, and Brandon walked into view, Kevin Allred in tow.
Over the next while, the stories were exchanged. Kevin had reached the trail junction and found the map and bottle. The difficulty was that he had no idea where we had started or where we were headed on said map, and we hadn't marked anything. He had taken the correct trail down the hill to meet up with the ORT. He had gotten to within two tenths of a mile from our campsite, where our route had joined the ORT and we had turned left, heading northwest into Horseshoe Bend. There he had instead turned right, and headed southeast along the ORT. He had in fact then hiked an additional two miles downstream to Kyle's Landing, where most float-trippers in this section are picked up at the end of the day. In traversing this section of trail Kevin had to cross the river four times. One of these crossings put him in an even fouler mood. He had shorts on under his pants for the river crossings, where he would drape his pants around his neck to keep them dry for the crossing. So far so good. But the river was fairly high that week due to the rains, and one crossing was unusually deep and swift-flowing. Kevin stumbled and almost lost all his stuff. His pants fell off from around his neck and were caught by the current and swept away very rapidly. They were sucked underwater and out of sight in another instant. By this time Kevin was in no physical shape to fight rapid current to try to find them, and daylight was fading fast, so he gritted his teeth and kept going. When he got to Kyle's landing, he found a kind Park Service employee who loaned him an old tent that had poles (I was carrying the poles for the tent in Kevin's pack, remember?) and he used it to spend the night there at Kyle's Landing. The next morning he did some thinking and going over maps, and correctly ascertained that we had started from Steel Creek. He found a kind soul who agreed to give him a ride there. When Travis, Drew and Brandon hiked into Steel Creek late that morning, they found Kevin, who had only been there about three minutes. They grabbed their inner tubes, inflated them, and headed back to camp. Of course, the cigarette-lighter-powered air pump they used wouldn't let them get the tubes as inflated as they would have liked, so they actually did more hiking than floating back to camp, but they got there in the middle of the afternoon.
So we were all there. Travis, Drew, Brandon, Kevin Askew, Kevin Allred, and me. Kevin and I triumphantly reunited the components of our tent and set it up in a likely spot. That night was considerably more cheery, despite the fact that it rained steadily. And by the way, after going through a rainy week, even Travis was ready to admit that a good tent was preferable to a hammock-and-tarp setup for weatherproof comfort. My gear envy abated.
It was nice, though, to have the rain-fly tarp over Drew's hammock for use as a rain cover while cooking.
I don't cook in tents for several good reasons, but the tarp was high enough and ventilated enough that it was great for that purpose.
My MSR Pocket Rocket stove brewed coffee, cooked my food, and did everything I asked - from roaring flame to gentle simmer - all week, with only two small fuel canisters used and a total pack weight of 19 ounces including fuel. A great little stove.
The rest of Day 3 was spent bluff-diving and hanging around camp. We went to bed that night in a much better frame of mind.
The next two days were spent swimming, fishing, and sitting on our large flat rock discussing life's mysteries.
One evening we accomplished a very difficult feat. Using only the rain-soaked wood we could find around us, and using a small hatchet to cut into the drier core of some logs, we lit a very respectable fire and had it roaring even with the light rain continuing to splash down drops from time to time. That night we sat on our flat rock by our fire and had a time of frank discussion and prayer that I will, very simply, treasure for the rest of my life. I hope the other guys benefited as much from that time as I did. Gentlemen, my profoundest thanks.We took two side excursions that are definitely worth a mention. We did these hikes in various groupings, because Brandon had to leave a day early and we were shuffling transportation around. The first was Hemmed-In Hollow Waterfall. I don't have a good picture of Hemmed-In Hollow, because I made the rookie mistake of allowing a stranger to take the only picture I have of the fall so that I could be IN said picture. I am indeed in the picture, blurred and unrecognizable. And the fall is nowhere in the frame. But Hemmed-In Hollow was definitely worth the hike. The fall (which are dry when there is no rain for a few days) was gushing water impressively, tumbling into a craggy box-canyon that soars up almost 300 feet.
The other side excursion was to Big Bluff. This will stay in my mind as one of my favorite spots. It definitely lived up to the hype that Randy gave it. We hiked through the rain in late afternoon, noting that the clouds were clearing off in spots and hoping that the sun would peek out and give us an impressive sunset we could watch from Big Bluff. There was a difficult 1.6-mile climb up the hill northwest of Horseshoe Bend, followed by a mosquito-filled "primitive route" for a quarter of a mile or so onto the Bluff trail. But then we came out onto the little ledge. There was an overhang of rock above our heads, and a wide panorama of the river below us. We got there with a few minutes to spare before sunset, and were rewarded for our labors. The sun came out from under the clouds just before it set, and for a glorious half hour or so we watched clouds forming below us as rain water evaporated off the trees and slowly moved up the river valley.
We sat and brewed coffee and tea, and then headed back before it got too dark to navigate the treacherous parts of the ledge.Finally the last day came. We were intending to hike out on Saturday, but we heard rumors of a huge thunderstorm brewing, so we decided to head out on Friday. We hiked out in various directions and hit the road. As we headed north, a monster storm moved in and pelted us with hail and blinding rain. We later heard that there was golf-ball-sized hail falling in the area where we were camped. We were glad our tents and tarps weren't put to that test.
We met in Springfield at Lambert's Cafe. "Throwed" rolls, fried potatoes, and classic southern American food. I did something I never thought possible before: I took advantage of a little-optioned Lambert's policy that allows you to get a second helping of your entree for free if you finish the first. Before I've always felt so full after the rolls and pass-around food that my entree barely fit. This time I ate all the rolls, pass-arounds, and my barbecued pork steak, and STILL wanted more. I cleaned my plate the second time and wasn't even painfully full then. So I don't think that counts as gluttony... A week of hiking creates, I think, an extenuating circumstance, right? (I'm starting to think much more about gluttony lately after I heard someone describe it quite debatably as the "pet sin of the American church." Hey, buddy, there's a lot of competition for that award...)
So anyway, I loved the Buffalo National River. In fact, I liked it so much that when our friend Candace wanted Cindy and I to go backpacking with her to celebrate the end of the school year in late May, I convinced her that we should go back to Arkansas. And we did, despite the fact that we only had three days instead of six. Cindy bravely ignored her claustrophobia and conquered Cob's Cave, and we used the ORT and its multiple river crossings to do an overnight out-and-back trip from Steel Creek to the same campsite on the west side of Horseshoe Bend. The warmer weather meant lots more drunken canoers this time around, but it was still a blast. Cindy and Candace both did the cliff dive, Cindy with the stylish "angel wing" that is now her trademark.
