Northwest Prong of Trace Creek, Ozarks east of Hagerville, Arkansas

3/2/2018 -  Northwest Prong of Trace Creek

GPS Coordinates:  (Latitude,  Longitude,  Elevation)
  Parking Location #1:  35.58673   -93.22045,  1794 ft.
  Parking Location #2:  35.60608   -93.22053,  834 ft.
  Falls #1:  35.59942   -93.22710,  909 ft.
  Falls #2:  35.59061   -93.23420,  1017 ft.
  Falls #3:  35.59151   -93.23994,  1156 ft.
  Falls #4:  35.59129   -93.23983,  1141 ft.
  Falls #5:  35.59025   -93.23987,  1182 ft.
  Falls #6:  35.58715   -93.23013,  1011 ft.
  Falls #7:  35.58526   -93.22964,  1035 ft.
  Falls #8:  35.60079   -93.22779,  810 ft.
  Falls #9:  35.60232   -93.22816,  801 ft.
  Falls #10:  35.60174   -93.22878,  820 ft.
  Falls #11:  35.60408   -93.21788,  820 ft.
  Falls #12:  35.60383   -93.21791,  826 ft.
  Falls #13:  35.60309   -93.22878
  Falls #14:  35.60215   -93.23203
  Falls #15:  35.60344   -93.23365
  Falls #16:  35.60447   -93.23489
  Falls #17:  35.60412   -93.23682
  Falls #18:  35.60367   -93.23780
  Falls #19:  35.60180   -93.23990
  Falls #20:  35.60166   -93.23997
  Falls #21:  35.60139   -93.24144
  Falls #22:  35.60110   -93.24173
  Falls #23:  35.60105   -93.24166
  Falls #24:  35.60283   -93.23631
  Falls #25:  35.60297   -93.23610

Pet-Friendly: Dogs off leash should be OK.  If your dog needs to be on a leash, it is doable but difficult because this is mostly all bushwhacking.  

Motorcycle Friendly: No!  This is not at all friendly to your big bike.  The parking locations are several miles down rough dirt roads.

Hiking Statistics:  The Trace Creek valley is over 1300 feet from top to bottom and covers several square miles.  Today I hiked 4.2 miles, with a highest-to-lowest elevation change of 545 feet.  This is all bushwhacking, with no trails of any kind once you get down into the Trace Creek basin.  The terrain is very rugged, with some undergrowth.  Overall, I would rate this a difficult bushwhack.

GPS files (.gpx format) - See maps at the bottom of this blog post
    Dover-Sand Gap area waypoints
    Trace Creek GPS track

Links to blog posts for other nearby areas:
    Hole Creek 
    Graves Creek (upper section)
    Graves Creek (lower section)

    Arkansas Sphinx

Falls #10

My friend Dan Frew and I had hiked Trace Creek just a month ago and had covered a lot of the huge Trace Creek basin.  We had found a lot of waterfalls, even though we only hiked up into the lower parts of each prong and Short Hollow, which is also part of the Trace Creek drainage.  Today, I was hiking alone, and because I intended to go into unknown areas that Boomer (our German Shepherd) might not be able to access, I left him at home as well.  On our last visit to the area, we bushwhacked over 10 miles in the drainage, going up each fork of each prong to the first photo-worthy waterfalls, then hiking back down to go up the next fork.  Today, I decided that I would concentrate on just one of the major prongs to see if I could thoroughly explore it.  We had finally gotten some major rainfall a week ago, so I was looking forward to seeing some of this area with good water flow.

Falls #22

To get there, from the Dover town square (junction of Hwy 7 and Hwy 27), go north on Highway 7 for 5.5 miles and turn left on Highway 164.  Go 7.6 miles on Highway 164 and turn right on FR-1800 (Pilot Rock Mountain Road or CR-3891).  This is just past the twin bridges over Big Piney Creek.  Stay on Pilot Rock Mtn Road for 5.5 miles as it changes to CR-3890, to CR-3861, to CR-4840.  Bear Right onto FR-1802 (aka CR-4891, or Meadows Knob Road).  Go 0.9 miles on FR-1802, then turn left onto a Jeep road.  Parking location #1 is 0.1 miles down this jeep road at a food plot.  Park as far off Meadows Knob Road as you feel comfortable in your vehicle, but be aware that going further will require a 4WD vehicle with good ground clearance.

Falls #20

Today, I was in my FJ Cruiser, so I felt pretty confident about continuing down the ATV trail that runs along the spur between Short Hollow and the rest of Trace Creek.  I had scouted out a location almost down to the level of the main creek itself that I was pretty confident the FJ could make it down to.  As I drove down the ATV trail, I had to stop occasionally and move logs and big rocks out of the way, and in two places go a bypass route around fallen trees, but I eventually made it all the way down to parking location #2.  At the time, I was thinking "woo-hoo!" because I had cut off most of the huge climb out of this area.  Before you decide to go that far down the mountain, though, you might want to read on for the rest of the story, and what it took to get back out.

I started out hiking down the old ATV trail, and in a very short time, I was at the bottom of the mountain.  It is less than 100 yards from my parking location to Short Hollow's creek, near where it flows into Trace Creek.  The first thing I noticed today was how much higher the flow in the creek was.  A month ago, it was no problem rock-hopping across Trace Creek, even down in this area where it has water drainage from the entire basin.  Today, even though our big rain was a week ago, it was still knee deep.  I figured I would eventually end up with both boots soaked, but wanted to prolong the amount of time I got to hike with dry socks as long as possible.  Since I had failed to restock trash bags in my pack after my last hike, I went barefoot, crossed the creek, dried my feet, and got rebooted.  

Falls #24

My recollection from my previous hike was that it was definitely easier to hike on the north side of Trace Creek up to the point the northwest prong branched off.  I also wanted to be on that side because I remembered Falls #9 spilling over the bluff on that side directly into the creek and wanted to check out the drainage above that.  Hiking up into that drainage, I did find Falls #13 about a hundred yards up that side drainage.  While nice, I wasn't all that impressed with it or the amount of flow in this small drainage, so I decided to cut off exploration and went back down to the main creek in the northwest prong.  This is an area where the blufflines stay intact and are deeply undercut as the creek has wound from side to side in this canyon.  Looking down, I saw enough rock that I thought hiking along the creek would be doable today, but it probably was flooded from side to side last week.  

Falls #14

I hiked along the top of the bluff past Falls #10, noting a good place to descend through the bluffline.  I didn't stop to go down to the base of the waterfall because I intended to go down along the creek in this area on my way back.  Comparing the flow over Falls #10 to my memory of it last month when we were still in the thick of a prolonged drought, the difference was amazing.  This gave me a lot of hope for conditions upstream, so I pressed on up the creek, hiking along the creek itself, and rock-hopping from side to side as needed.  I found Falls #14 about a quarter mile upstream, a very pretty but smaller waterfall right on the main creek.

Falls #18

Continuing upstream, I soon came to the first major side drainage on the right.   This side drainage seemed to have almost as much water as the main creek, and until I looked at my GPS map, I thought it might be a fork in the creek. Since I wanted to explore as much as I could in this prong, I followed it upstream to Falls #15.  I don't normally pursue side drainages that far uphill because the flow drops off significantly as you gain elevation.  Today, looking above Falls #15, I couldn't see where the side drainage went, but I could see a large, solid rock bluff rising up above in the background.  I decided to check out at least one more big bluffline upstream, to see if the amount of flow would hold up. 

Falls #16

Climbing above Falls #15, I hiked upstream to that large bluffline and found Falls #16 spilling out over it.  This is certainly a nice one, and it made me wish I had made this hike a few days earlier, to catch it with all the water flow from the rains we had received.  As it was, it still had plenty of water to look great.  I chose not to look further upstream, however, as it seemed unlikely there would be enough water flowing higher up to produce good waterfalls.  Instead, I decided to hike around the base of this large bluffline, catching the waterfalls produced wherever side drainages spilled over it.  I found Falls #17, and Falls #18 in this fashion, all about the same elevation.  I saw Falls #19, a large waterfall with a lot of flow today, on the main creek at this same elevation.  I bypassed Falls #19, for now, to continue upstream just a bit more.  Falls #20 is a smaller waterfall just upstream, also on the main creek.

Falls #22 (right) and Falls #23 (left)

By the time I got to Falls #21, I had come all the way around to the top of the main creek in the northwest prong.  Falls #21 was in a side drainage just a few yards from the main creek.  Just upstream from it the main creek split into two forks and had a really nice waterfall in each fork, Falls #22 and #23, on that same bluffline.  These two waterfalls really made my day, they were beautiful; my photos really do not do them justice.  The sun had been very bright and harsh all day.  I did my best to compensate for the glare, but I'm afraid the photos are still sub-par.  As usual, photos really don't compare with actually being there.  I think there are probably at least a couple more nice waterfalls upstream in each of these forks, but it was getting late, and I still had to hike all the way back down and do some photography in the lower canyon area of this prong.

Falls #19

I headed back downstream along the creek and stopped to get some photos of Falls #20 and Falls #19, using a break just downstream of Falls #19 on the north side to access the bottom of the waterfall.  Continuing downstream about a quarter mile, I found Falls #24 in a side drainage on the north side.  All of the side drainages with substantial flow were on the north side, taking in a drainage area that goes all the way up to the pinnacle of Pilot Rock Mountain.  Falls #24 is a tall waterfall, flowing almost vertically down the rock face of the bluff into a small pool before draining via a steep cascade into the main creek.  Falls #25 is a three-tiered waterfall less than a hundred feet further downstream, flowing down the same bluffline as Falls #24.  You can easily see both Falls #24 and Falls #25 together from the main creek.  They are in the same drainage as Falls #17, on the bluffline much higher up.

Continuing downstream, I soon came to the part of the main creek that I had left when following the side drainage up to Falls #15 and Falls #16.  I retraced my route from there back to Falls #10, where I climbed down through a break on the left (north) side.  This waterfall was one Dan and I had found on the first hike here, and the difference today with a more normal amount of water was amazing.  Falls #10 is really nice, and the creek in this prong from Falls #10 to where Falls #9 spills over the north bluff is a very cool little creek.  The creek has eroded its bed down through solid sandstone, and as it has flowed from side to side within that channel, it has eroded big overhangs in the sides.  This is a really nice feature that reminds me of parts of Graves Creek.  We did not see another creek canyon like this in the rest of the Trace Creek valley.

Falls #10

After pausing to snap some photos of Falls #10 and Falls #9 and a lot of the creek in between,  I headed on back.  This is where I made another error that I won't repeat.  I theorized that since I was at the juncture of the northwest prong and the main Trace Creek, I should cross Trace Creek upstream of the confluence of these two creeks.  That way I would have smaller creek crossings and I would be on the side of Trace Creek I needed to be on to go back up the ATV trail to where I had parked.  It's just another theory that did not work out in practice.  Hiking on the south side of Trace Creek was much harder because of the steepness of the slope on that side and a lot more briers and underbrush.  The contour of the slope on the south side (right side as you hike downstream) eventually forced me to cross back over Trace Creek anyway, this time where it was wider and deeper, and then to cross back at the bottom of the ATV trail.

Falls #9

From the juncture of Trace Creek and Short Hollow, it was a really short hike and minimal climb back to where I had parked the FJ at parking location #2.  I was patting myself on the back for eliminating most of the huge climb up out of the Trace Creek valley and started driving back up the ATV trail the way I had come down.  Unfortunately, that was another plan that had a few issues.  Going downhill is always pretty easy, but going uphill I came to a spot that I had to nose the front wheels up and onto rock across the trail.  Normally, that's easy.  But now I had all four wheels on wet clay, going up a steep grade, and they just didn't want to get enough traction to get the front wheels up where they could grab.  Even in 4WD low and the rear axle locked, I was going nowhere.  

There was no way to go a different route through the woods, and I didn't have a chainsaw.  Even if I did, there was a big bluff on one side and dropoff on the other side.  So I spooled out the winch, connected the disconnects and control pendant, and winched my way uphill past the deep wet clay.  Thank God I put that winch in.  There were two more places that I got stuck in deep wet clay, but I had just left the winch connected.  I figured the food plot would be a good place to disconnect everything, and as it turned out I needed that winch a couple more times.  Making matters worse was the fact that Friday is date night, and I should have been home getting a shower and getting ready to take my wife out for dinner.  One of my preset messages on my InReach (see FAQ and Glossary) is "I'm delayed, but everything is OK".  This was the first time I was delayed enough to use it.  Bethany can always ping the InReach to see where I am, but it's nice to send a message so she knows not to worry.  It took me over an hour to drive the two miles up to the food plot at the top of the ATV trail.

Falls #23

Trace Creek clearly is a nice area, with a lot of stuff to see.  My conundrum for this hollow is that for the waterfalls to look really nice, you need some wet conditions.  Wet conditions mean the ATV trail will also be wet, making the drive back out probably not worth the time and energy you save by parking at the bottom of the trail.  While hiking the ATV trail along the spur is not as steep as the side of the hollow, it is still really steep.  It is a 1.5-mile mile hike up this spur along the ATV trail and an elevation change of 1067 feet.  If you are familiar with the hike from Hemmed-In Hollow Falls up to the Compton trailhead, this is about like that, except on that hike you can take a breather by going out to Wild Vic's Cabin.  On this hike out, you just have to take it slow and take a break when needed.   I will need at least two more trips to the Trace Creek Valley, one to fully explore Short Hollow, and another full day to explore the south prong of Trace Creek.  So I'll be back!

Trace Creek northwest prong GPS track (today's hike)

Trace Creek drainage basin
Red - 2/6/2018 hike
Blue - today's hike