4/25/2019 Teapot Hollow Waterfalls
GPS Coordinates: (Latitude, Longitude, Elevation)
Parking Location: 35.650609,-93.227392, 516 ft.
Falls #1: 35.650994,-93.228957, 643 ft.
Falls #2: 35.650936,-93.229155, 694 ft.
Falls #3: 35.650936,-93.229155, 700 ft.
Falls #4: 35.651036,-93.229333, 734 ft.
Falls #5: 35.650951,-93.229745, 801 ft.
Teapot Hollow Water Slide: 35.651158,-93.230291, 893 ft.
Falls #6: 35.651176,-93.230782, 818 ft.
Falls #7: 35.651289,-93.231207, 865 ft.
Hourglass Falls: 35.651276,-93.231596, 936 ft.
Salem Falls: 35.651442,-93.232547, 1131 ft.
Falls #10: 35.65160, -93.23307, 1192 ft.
Falls #11: 35.65192, -93.23403, 1305 ft.
Bluffline Break: 35.651853,-93.228863, 731 ft.
Pet-Friendly: Dogs should be okay off leash. This is a fairly rugged area, but each waterfall has access to the bluff above on one side or the other. That access may be somewhat steep and slippery so some smaller dogs may struggle.
Hiking Statistics: On today's hike, I logged 1.34 miles total round trip. Distance-wise, it is certainly a short hike. Teapot Hollow is 1273 feet from top to bottom, on the side of a mountain along Big Piney Creek, which it flows into. Over that short distance up the creek, however, there is a 714-foot minimum-to-maximum elevation gain. My total track time on this hike was 3:36 (hh:mm), but most of that was time taking photos and milling about various water features, which is not seen as "time moving". My actual hiking time (moving time) was only 22 minutes for this hike. Despite the short distance, due to the ruggedness of the terrain and steep climb in, I would rate it as a moderate to difficult bushwhack.
Links to blog posts for other nearby areas:
Pam's Grotto Falls
Haw Creek Falls and Highway 123 Falls
Bear Creek waterfalls
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| Falls #1 |
I made a trek through Teapot Hollow the first time just three months ago with my friend Dan Frew, and wrote a blog post about this nice polyfoss area then. Today, I went higher in the hollow and discovered a couple more waterfalls, plus I had an opportunity to experience hiking it in "leaves on" season. In light of that, and the fact that I have a bunch of photos with spring greenery, I decided to go ahead and publish another blog post with some updated information and pictures. Today, I was solo hiking. Boomer (our German Shepherd) had surgery recently to remove some tumors (all benign!), so he is on limited duty for a while until he is all healed up. After that first hike here, Teapot Hollow went on my list of "go back and hike when there is some spring color" places, and we had that today. Teapot Hollow; it's a short and stout little hollow, and steep! See what I did there? Therefore, you really need to go after a good rain, and the rain was just easing up as I was loading up in the FJ and leaving home.
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| Parking location - next to road along Big Piney Creek |
Everything is simple and easy for this one, including the driving directions. Just pop the GPS coordinates for the parking location in your navigation system and go. There is only one road to it.
(1) If you can't do that, from Hagerville, go north on Highway 123 for 15.3 miles and turn right on FR-1002 (aka CR-5861). Go 2.5 miles down FR-1002 and park off the road at the end of the clearing here.
(2) If you are coming from the other direction, from Pelsor (Sand Gap), go south-west on Highway 123 for 11.3 miles, then turn left (south) on FR-1002. Go 2.5 miles down FR-1002 and park off the road at the end of the clearing here.
Today, as I parked, I looked down the road and saw that Big Piney was high, but not even close to the road. I considered driving on down a little more and checking out the hollow next to Teapot Hollow to the south. Common sense got the better of me, and I decided to wait until I finished hiking to see what the creek level was like. By the time I finished my short hike up Teapot Hollow and back, Big Piney Creek had risen up over the road and was rising fast. Be careful out there, and don't allow yourself to get trapped by rising water. One note about this parking location; everything on this hike is on public land. That being said, the patches of flat, cleared, grassy land along Big Piney Creek is usually leased by the Forest Service to folks in the area for grazing or cutting hay. You could drive across the field to be a little closer to the mouth of the hollow, but please just park there along the road. A few extra yards on flat land won't kill you.
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| Falls #3 |
As simple as the driving directions are, the hiking directions are just as simple. With the spring foliage, you can't see the first (lowest) waterfall as we could back in January. But you could sure hear it from the parking spot. I could tell before I got out of the FJ that it would be flowing pretty well. I hiked directly for the first waterfall, spent some time there taking photos, and climbed up around the grotto on the left, and there was Falls #2. The base of Falls #2 is literally just a few feet from the top of Falls #1. Likewise, the base of Falls #3 is only a few feet from the top of Falls #2. I only gave numbers to the waterfalls that were large enough and/or otherwise 'photo-worthy'. Those other water features in this little hollow were not all as close together as the first three. In between the larger water features is a continuous parade of smaller waterfalls, water slides, and cascades, all very nice and all photogenic in their own way. Back in January, the highest waterfall we visited is the beautiful Salem Falls, named for my niece Kate's son. Salem Moorehead. On that hike, Dan and I looked at the topo map and didn't think there would be much of anything upstream.
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| Salem Falls |
The entire way up the hollow, you can see the next water feature from the previous one, so planning a good route from one to the next is fairly simple. From the parking location to the highest waterfall is only a little over a half mile hiking distance, including the random lateral movements in and out of the creek area. The more passable route on the way up to Falls #6 seemed to be along the left side. The right side of the creek had the occasional sheer bluff that required crossing the creek or climbing higher on the bluff. From Falls #6 on up, the right (north) side of the creek seemed to be the easier hiking conditions with better access to the base of the upstream waterfalls. At Salem Falls, I was looking at the huge rocks and bluff on the right side and decided I should climb a little higher to see what might be there. I climbed up on the left side as the right side appeared to have a sheer bluff higher up. That was doable, but once above Salem Falls, I discovered that the route on the right side would have been much easier. On future hikes, I'll just stick to the right after I get to Falls #6.
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| Falls #10 |
Above Salem Falls, I found a steep cascade climbing up the hollow and another nice sized waterfall, Falls #10, pouring over the bluffline upstream. The left side had been easy enough to climb to the next bench, but above the top of Salem Falls, it was very steep and slippery on that side. Once I scrambled up to the base of Falls #10, I found the slope along the base of the bluff on the right side to be much more manageable. Having found Falls #10 where I didn't expect to find any more, I decided to climb a little higher and found yet another bluffline with a waterfall where the creek flowed over it. Falls #11 is not as imposing as the other major water features in this hollow since it just has a couple of smaller drops and much less flow. I looked around upstream from it, and the hollow does seem to flatten out at that point. The flow in the creek was also substantially reduced this high in the hollow, so I decided to call it quits for the day and head back down to the parking location.
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That small triangular hole in the center is where
the underground stream is running. My trekking
pole is to the left for scale |
As I was hiking along the base of the bluff to the right of Falls #10 on my way out, I heard the sound of rushing water. I paused, trying to locate it, and finally saw that it was coming from a small triangular shaped hole smaller than my hand right in the side of the bluff. I could hear the sounds of rushing and gurgling water deep inside the rock, but could not see far enough back into the hole to see any water. Karst formations make water do weird things in the Ozarks, and this was yet another of those weird things. I looked around above the bluff for an inlet, and below the bluff looking for an outlet, but I found nothing. There is no telling where the underground stream comes from, nor where it goes to, but I suspect it comes out below the bluff at the top of Salem Falls and enters the creek at that point. There is a cave back in there somewhere. How big and extensive a cave depends on how much of the rock is sandstone, which is harder than granite, and how much is (or was) softer material such as limestone and shale. The softer rock erodes over time and leaves a cave or water channel. That's how karst formations work over the eons. I'll put this in my mental bag of weird thing you see in the Ozarks.
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| Hourglass Falls |
Somehow, after I finished shooting some photos at Hourglass Falls, the round ball-type mount for my Manfrotto compact-action tripod unscrewed from the bottom of my camera. Fortunately, I had a spare in the pack, so I could keep shooting. On the hike back down, I retraced my GPS track as well as I could, but with the leaf cover on the forest floor, the spring growth, and generally rocky terrain, I didn't have a prayer of finding it. From Hourglass Falls, I went back up to the ridge on the north side and hiked down. In spring, this was a little more difficult due to the new foliage than it was back in January. Then, you could clearly see the slope down the mountain and pick your route as you went down. It still wasn't all that difficult, as bushwhacking conditions go. I ran into the occasional brier patch, but for the most part, I just picked the most open path in front of me and headed downhill. I had marked a GPS waypoint for the bluffline break at the bottom of the mountain previously, and that helped me locate the right point to head toward. At the bottom of the bluff, I saw a large flat rock, about three feet high, leaning against a tree that looked for all the world like Darth Vader. Yet another entry for that mental bag of weird stuff you see in the Ozarks. Maybe I should write a book, or a blog, or something about this stuff.
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| Darth Vader Rock |
Make no mistake about it, this is a wet weather polyfoss. We had a couple of weeks beforehand with relatively dry weather, but I think the area probably got a couple of inches of rain in the last 48 hours. There could have been more rain locally, but based on the relatively good road conditions and the level in Big Piney, I doubt it was as much as we had prior to the January hike here. It looks like it doesn't take a whole lot to make it look good. Today, it had just the right amount of flow to make it look it's best. At any rate, you need to know that it will need some wet weather. Since the drainage area for this hollow is not very large, it will go away pretty quickly even after a good rain. It's easy enough to get to and check out so I would recommend doing that after a good rain. If it doesn't look all that good on the lowest waterfall, you can go elsewhere and not waste any time. This little hollow has a whole lot of beautiful scenery, a very large payload for very little effort. I was glad to see the bushwhacking conditions were still not that bad, even with the spring foliage. If you can catch it on a wet day and don't mind a steep bushwhack, I would highly recommend this one.
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| Falls #1 |
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| Falls #2 (foreground) and Falls #3 (background) |
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Falls #2
(photo taken in January)
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| Falls #4 |
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| Falls #5 |
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| Water Slide above Falls #5 |
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| Falls #6 |
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| Falls #6 |
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| Falls #6 |
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| Falls #7 |
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| Salem Falls |
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| Falls #10 |
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From the top of Falls #2
The top of Falls #1 is at the edge of the visible water
The parking location is at the right side of the clearing in the background
Big Piney Creek is immediately behind the clearing
(photo taken in January)
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Teapot Hollow
Blue - today's hiking track |
