Why Hollow, Ozarks west of Freeman Springs, Arkansas

2/17/2018 - Why Hollow waterfalls

GPS Coordinates:  (Latitude,  Longitude,  Elevation)
  Parking Location:  35.62360   -93.10041,  1591 ft.
  Falls #1:  35.62517   -93.10139,  1499 ft.
  Falls #2:  35.62479   -93.10371
  Falls #3:  35.62462   -93.10386

  Falls #4:  35.62405   -93.10402

  Falls #5:  35.62476   -93.10672

  Falls #6:  35.62479   -93.10691

  Falls #7:  35.62489   -93.10722

  Falls #8:  35.62496   -93.10764

  Falls #9:  35.62496   -93.10764

  Falls #10:  35.62495   -93.10836

  Falls #11:  35.62510   -93.10861

  Falls #12:  35.62498   -93.10911

  Falls #13:  35.62506   -93.10950,  1043 ft.

  Bluffline Break:  35.62914   -93.10928,  999 ft.

  Falls #14:  35.62939   -93.10924,  1005 ft.
  Falls #15:  35.62924   -93.10947,  929 ft.
  Falls #16:  35.62951   -93.10802,  1111 ft.
  Falls #17:  35.64942   -93.10747

Pet-Friendly:  Dogs off leash may be okay, but there are some areas they may have difficulty getting into and out of.  This is a very steep hollow, and a couple of bluffline breaks we went through required climbing up two or three feet.  If your dog is too heavy to lift that far or if you think your dog needs to be on a leash, I would leave it at home.  

Motorcycle Friendly:  Not 'friendly', but do-able.  You will be going about 3.1 miles down Dare Mine Road from where you turn off Highway 7.  This is a dirt road, and not too bad at this point.  Your big bike, your decision.  I have driven a Harley Electraglide on worse roads for much longer distances.  After that, it is advisable to hike down the old Jeep road.

Hiking Statistics:  From the top (Dare Mine Knob) to the bottom of Why Hollow, it is over 1200 feet of elevation change before it runs into Indian Creek.  Today, we only hiked a total of 2.81 miles, with a minimum-to-maximum elevation change of 719 feet.  As with most areas in the Ozarks, getting to waterfalls means repeated climbs and descents, to get from the top of waterfalls to the base, or vice versa.  We hiked in two different forks of Why Hollow, so we had ascents and descents for each.  This is a difficult bushwhack, because of the ruggedness of the terrain and the very steep slopes within the drainages.  

GPS files (.gpx format) - GPS track maps are at the bottom of this post.
  Waypoints for Why, Gulf, Still, and Elmer Page Hollows
  Why Hollow GPS Track

Links to blog posts for nearby areas:
    Elmer Page Hollow
    Still Hollow North Prongs
    Still Hollow South Prong
    Still Hollow Lower Section
    Gulf Hollow 

Falls #8

I hadn't planned on going hiking when I woke up this morning.  We had actually got a nice rain last night, but it was still raining and I am not a big fan of hiking in the rain.  But about the time it stopped raining, I got a text from my friend and frequent hiking partner, Dan Frew, wanting to know if I was up to a hike into Why Hollow.  This little hollow had been on my "wet weather" hiking list for quite a while.  Dan had been there before and knew it should have a number of nice waterfalls, but we had put it on the back-burner until we got some rain.  Well, Shazam!  Here we were, with some rain.  So I met up with Dan and David Dedman, another friend I have often hiked with, and we headed north to Why Hollow.  Why "Why" Hollow, you might ask?  It was an unnamed hollow but had enough really nice waterfalls that it needed something we could call it because folks would be asking.  On the topo maps, this hollow has the main creek and two forks looking exactly like a "Y".  Y Hollow seemed a little odd, and we already had one named Wye Hollow.  Additionally, the climb in and out was so steep and we kept asking ourselves "WHY did we think this was a good idea?"  So, Why Hollow it is.

Falls #15 (top)

Driving directions to Why Hollow are fairly easy.  From the Dover
 town square (intersection of Highways 7 and 27), go north on Highway 7 for 21.2 miles.  This will take you to the small community of Freeman Springs.  Like many of the older communities in northwest Arkansas, don't expect a bunch of houses or a sign or anything.  It's more like an area that used to have a group families living there and now has one or two.  Turn left (southwest) on Dare Mine Road (aka CR-1806).  Go 3.1 miles on Dare Mine Road and turn right onto a Jeep road.  If you don't have a good 4WD vehicle, park here.  Either drive down it or hike down it, but go an additional 0.7 miles down this Jeep road to where a large berm blocks access to the logging road heading north across the top of Why Hollow.  This is the parking location I marked with the GPS coordinates above.  The parking location is down off Dare Mine Knob along the spur between Elmer Page Hollow and Why Hollow.  This Jeep road is actually called Dare Mine Knob Road, not to be confused with Dare Mine Road, which goes all the way down to the junction of Indian Creek with Moccasin Creek.  See the map at the bottom of this post.

How culverts were done back in the day!

From the parking location, we headed over the berm and down the old logging road there, to the top of the first fork, and headed down into the hollow there.  Where the logging road crosses the top of the drainage, the culverts are a little old school.  They had taken a couple of big old black gum trees, which are often hollow, and laid them in a trench under the road.  I don't know how long they had been in the ground, but they did not seem to be rotted at all, other than the hollow middle.  Pretty cool, the stuff you find in the woods.  We found the first waterfall only a hundred feet or so off the old road.  All the waterfalls in this hollow are unnamed, so I'll stick to my standard convention of just numbering them as we found them.  

Falls #2

Getting down to the base of Falls #1 was a bit of a feat in itself.  The slope on both sides of this hollow is very steep, making it a little difficult just getting down to the creek level without slipping.  The real challenge for us in Why Hollow was hiking downstream from waterfall to waterfall on our feet.  We only hiked a little less than three miles total today, but this kind of hiking takes it out of you very quickly.  Falls #2 is over a tenth of a mile further downstream, a beautifully long stairstep waterfall extending and curving downhill.  Falls #3 was right below that, a more classic Ozark waterfall spilling out over a ledge.  Wherever we encountered this type of waterfall, we had to climb up on the steep bluff, then trek downstream to make sure we didn't slip and end up going over the edge of the bluff and down into the grotto.

Falls #9

Falls #4 was in a side drainage a short distance further downstream, but after that, we didn't come to Falls #5 until about 0.2 miles downstream.  This is actually somewhat normal spacing between waterfalls in an Ozarks hollow, as waterfalls form where the creek goes over blufflines and those big layers of harder rock are layered out such that there will be a run of the creek between where major blufflines create a drop for a waterfall.  Why Hollow is no ordinary hollow, however, and it falls off steeply as it runs downhill.  Once we found Falls #5, we encountered waterfalls one after another, less than a hundred feet apart.  Even with the curvature of the creek, we could sometimes see four or five of them at a time from up on the slope along the creek.

Falls #10 (background)
Falls #11 (foreground)

The next eight waterfalls, Falls #5 through Falls #13, were spaced out within the next 300 yards of the creek in this fork, a veritable waterfallapalooza!  Some were smaller, some a pretty good size, waterfalls of all shapes and styles.  It is awesome to see a polyfoss area this prolific.  It seems to be a feature of this localized area in the Ozarks, with Still Hollow to the north and east of Why Hollow being much the same way.  I have documented 67 "photo worthy" waterfalls to date in Still Hollow, and I have no doubt there are more waiting to be discovered. 

Falls #14

After Falls #13, the creek in this fork still dropped off fairly steeply, but for the most part, the heavy rock layers downstream had broken down.  There were a few smaller waterfalls, including some in side drainages that did not have much flow today, but no more that I considered photo-worthy.  We continued down and around the bluff to the right and started hiking upstream on the other fork in Why Hollow.  On this fork, the bluffline was higher and unbroken until we had gone upstream to about the same elevation as Falls #13 had been in the other fork.  This is where we found Falls #14, and we found one bluffline break that we were able to carefully make our way down to get to the base of Falls #14.  It isn't much of a bluffline break, but it was all we could find.  The other side of the creek appeared to be just as sheer downstream, with no breaks in the bluff cliff anywhere that we could see.  

Falls #15

Once at the base of Falls #14, the creek flows just a few yards downstream before plunging into the long, beautiful cascade that is Falls #15.  Falls #15 falls steeply down, curving into the side of the solid rock cliff that it has slowly eroded a slot channel into over the eons.  Photographing the lower part of Falls #15 is a little tricky in that it necessitates climbing down some rock ledges to a point where you can see the cascade.  You can't see this from on top of the bluff cliff because it has channeled into the rock on the south side of the creek.  On the other side, where the creek leaves the base of Falls #14, there is a huge shelter where the creek has eroded the solid sandstone several yards back from the present day creek bed.  This shelter extends all the way from the base of Falls #14 to the top of Falls #15.

Falls #16

We climbed back up through the treacherous bluffline break on the right (south) side and continued upstream.  Once adjacent to the top of Falls #14, we were able to slope back down to the creek bed and continue upstream at the creek level.  Falls #16, a little over a hundred yards upstream from Falls #14, is perhaps the crown jewel of this steep little hollow.  It is actually four falls, a stunning 4-tiered waterfall system that really put an exclamation point on an already awesome hike.  As you might suspect, you can hear this one quite a distance away.  Upstream from Falls #16, Falls #17 is a continuous cascade of smaller waterfalls stretching for a good 50 yards upstream.  On the climb up the slope, you can see it stretch out far up into the drainage, nature at its finest.  

Falls #14

This is where we chose to make our climb up out of the drainage, heading straight up the slope to the spur between the two forks of Why Hollow.  When I say straight up, that's what I mean.  It is very steep, and the clay soil covered with loose rock and a thick layer of loose leaves makes for a very strenuous hike up to the spur.  There we found the old logging road that we had started hiking down before we peeled off and went down into the southern-most fork.  The entire hike was not that long, and just packed with waterfall after waterfall, but the hike out is a little rough.  After hitting the old logging road, it is still uphill but at a much lower grade and much easier hiking conditions.  

Falls #1

Why Hollow is another of those great areas in the Arkansas Ozarks that no one

really knows about and no one ever goes to but is just spectacular, unbridled 

natural beauty.  Note that it is strenuous hiking at times, as I have mentioned, and sometimes a little treacherous.  That being said, if you are up to it, this hike is a difficult bushwhack but definitely worthwhile.  I plan on going back in the spring to get some photos with a little greenery and hopefully even better water flow.  The well-known waterfalls that people know of and go to frequently, like Hemmed-In Hollow Falls, Compton's Double Falls, etc., are great, but there is something about exploring and photographing areas like this that few people will ever set eyes on that really enthralls me.  If you go, make sure it is in the relatively wet weather for best effect, and be very careful out there.

Why Hollow GPS track

Area around Why Hollow (purple track in center)
Still Hollow - north and east
Elmer Page Hollow - south
Gulf Hollow - east
Cowan Hollow - far east
Buzzard's Roost - west