White Rock Creek waterfalls, Ozarks near Fern, Arkansas

1/16/2019 - White Rock Creek waterfalls and bluffs

GPS Coordinates:  (Latitude,  Longitude,  Elevation)
  Parking Location #1 (today's):  35.64503   -93.96658,  
  Parking Location #2:  35.68084   -93.96452
  Old trail branch:  35.65769   -93.97131
  Second Chance Falls:  35.66530    -93.96570
  White Rock Creek Cascade:  35.67111   -93.96820
  Falls #7:  35.67164   -93.96848
  White Rock Creek Falls:  35.67330   -93.97110
  Falls #4:  35.67341   -93.97392
  Falls #5:  35.67353   -93.97493
  Hesitation Falls:  35.67389   -93.97500
  Trail crossing near Parking location #2:  35.68067   -93.96430

Pet-Friendly:  Dogs will be fine, either on-leash or off.  This is a hike with a well-defined trail, and should not be challenging for any dog.  It is not a very rugged area or hike, except for the bushwhack down to Second Chance Falls.

Hiking Statistics:  The out-and-back hike today was a total of 6.2 miles.  Most of that was on the Shores Lake-White Rock loop trail.  There was some bushwhacking involved in going to Second Chance Falls and everything upstream of White Rock Creek Falls.  The minimum-to-maximum elevation difference was only 341 feet, but there are many climbs where the trail dips down off the bluff to cross side drainages, or when the trail has to climb the bluff due to restrictions on the creek bank.  The round trip time was 4:27 (hh:mm), but the actual hiking time was right at 2:00 hours.  Hiking the trail is easy, but with the limited bushwhacks involved, I would rate this a moderate hike.

GPS files (.gpx format) - See maps at the bottom of this blog post
  Mulberry River Area waypoints
  White Rock Creek GPS tracks
  

Links to blog posts for other nearby areas:
  Sixty Foot Falls

  Devil's Den Loop Trail

  Jack White Falls and Phipps Branch Falls

Second Chance Falls

On my visit to Jack White Falls a few days ago, I was reminded how much I have back-burnered hiking trips to the western Ozarks, and also reminded what a great area this is.  I vowed to spend more time in this part of the Ozarks, and today was an opportunity to do just that.  When I was thinking of where to go last night, I researched the White Rock Creek area because Boomer (our German shepherd) was feeling kind of gimpy and I thought this would be a fairly low-impact area for him.  Usually, when I start getting ready to go out hiking, he is all over it, bounding around hanging out near the back door of the FJ to make sure he doesn't get left behind.  He is normally just as happy as a pig in poop to get out in the woods because that is his happy time, his favorite thing to do.  Today, he was still limping a little and showed absolutely no interest in getting out in the woods, just laying on the couch with a "not today" look.  My wife, Bethany, decided he was staying home.  She also declined to go hiking today, saying something about "the rest of the Christmas stuff won't put itself away."  So I took that as my cue to get out while I could and set out solo today.

White Rock Creek Cascade

There is an actual trail running along White Rock Creek, something I don't have on most hikes. It is actually part of the White Rock Mountain and Shores Lake Loop Trail, which spurs off the Ozark Highlands Trail (OHT) and connects the two recreation areas.  The entire loop is over 12 miles long, and frankly, I was only interested in the much more scenic west side of the loop.  You could hike this from the White Rock Mountain Side or the Shores Lake side, but since I was doing an "out-and-back" hike instead of the whole loop, I choose to start at the Shores Lake end.  It's a longer hike to get up to all the waterfalls, but you avoid the big climb out at the upper end.  There are still a lot of ups-and-downs going and coming this way, probably just as much overall climbing, but it is spaced out over the full length instead of one big climb at the end.  I listed coordinates for parking locations on both ends above, as well as where to find the trail from parking location #2 if you choose to hike down from the top.  It is only about 100 feet ahead from where you park.  As I mentioned, I prefer hiking up from the Shores Lake end of the trail.

White Rock Creek Falls

Getting to the White Rock Creek area is easy and straightforward, and has a paved road almost all the way to the parking location.  Take exit 24 from I-40 and head north on Highway 215.  Go 12.6 miles north on Highway 215, through the small town of Fern, and turn left (north) on Bliss Ridge Road (aka CR-75).  Go 1.5 miles on Bliss Ridge Road, past the Shores Lake campground, and park at the pull-off in the sharp right turn there.  This is parking location #1, where I started today's hike from.  To get to parking location #2, keep going an additional 3.7 miles on Bliss Ridge Road and turn left (west) on White Rock Mountain Road.  Go 0.6 miles west on White Rock Mountain Road and turn left onto a Jeep road.  Go about 200 yards down the Jeep road to where it to loops around on itself and park.  This is Parking Location #2.  If you had gone straight on the original trace road instead of the circular loop, the trail is about 100 feet down that trace road.  Go right (west) on that trail and you will be hiking down the mountain to White Rock Creek.  

From parking location #1, my starting point for today's hike, you'll notice that there is a logging road straight ahead on the large pull-out area, but nothing that looks like a trail.  The trail actually comes up from the Shores Lake campground and crosses the road immediately to the right of the parking pullout.  You can go out to the road and get right on the trail and start hiking north.  Or, you can go down that logging road.  It runs for almost a half mile north along Hurricane Creek, parallelling a little below the actual trail.  I didn't see any signs of recent logging activity, although there was an old sign on the trail that indicated it was being logged.  The old logging road has some areas along it you could pull a vehicle into and park if you have a 4WD or high clearance vehicle.  My FJ would easily make it down this logging road, but I left it parked at Bliss Ridge Road because I intended to take that initial half mile on the trail itself either coming or going, just to check it out.  

Falls #4

I took the old logging road on the way out, just for a little variation in scenery. 

 In less than a half mile, it goes from a couple of ruts down to just a single trail and merges seamlessly with the Shores Lake-White Rock Mountain spur trail.  This first part of the trail runs along Hurricane Creek, a large creek that feeds Shores Lake.   While the logging road is closer to it than the trail, you still can't see much of Hurricane Creek, even in the winter.  What is it with the way we name creeks here, anyway?  There is another Hurricane Creek that runs through the Hurricane Creek Wilderness Area near Pelsor, and yet another a few miles east of that off White Oak Mountain northeast of Hector. We don't even get hurricanes as far inland as Arkansas.  We get lots of tornados, but I don't know of any creeks named Tornado Creek.  Anyway, I digress.  Back to the hike!

Bluffs upstream of
White Rock Creek Falls

The trail soon comes down to where it crosses the creek at Bliss Spring Hollow. 

 Some kindred soul that also hates hiking with boots full of water has graciously put large rocks across the creek to help with that crossing.  A short distance after that, about 1.1 miles down the trail from the parking area, you finally come to White Rock Creek where it flows into Hurricane Creek.  The hike to this point is not all that scenic, but from here on the trail follows along one of the prettiest creeks in the Ozarks.  To this point, there are a lot of dense thickets of brier along both sides of the trail, and if I were bushwhacking instead of having the trail available, I probably wouldn't venture up this creek very far.  As it is, though, the trail is actually a pretty good one.  It has been modified from the original trail blazed to improve the route.  If you look at the old National Forest Service (FS) maps, you can see where the original trail crossed the creek, runs down the west side, then crosses again.  They now have routed the trail up on the bluff on the east (right as you go upstream) side, and those two crossings are eliminated.  I have marked the location the old trail branched off and listed those coordinates above if you want to head upstream that way.

Second Chance Falls

White Rock Creek is a good sized creek, and I'm always going to try to get out here when the water is high, so I don't mind at all that the trail keeps me on one side.  The downside of this route is that it is easy to miss one of the beautiful waterfalls on White Rock Creek.  Going downstream, you are very likely to miss it, and going upstream there is only one spot that you can catch a glimpse of it if you are paying attention to the creek instead of watching where your next step is.   Second Chance Falls is a beautiful, broad, waterfall running across the breadth of White Rock Creek.  It is now about a hundred yards off the trail, so it requires some bushwhacking down to it.  Instead of trying to locate the old trail and backtracking along it, there is a crease, a steep drainage, just downstream of the waterfall that I climbed down and back up.  

Second Chance Falls - with Spring/early Summer Foliage
photo by John Moore, June 16, 2008

This waterfall was named by John Moore.  John is kind of a legendary figure in that, like Tim Ernst, he spent a good deal of his life hiking through the Ozarks and documenting his treks with some stunning photography.  He always tried to get out and spend some time in the woods with his sons on Father's Day and had missed that opportunity in 2008.  After a big thunderstorm rolled through that night knocking out power where he worked, John had an opportunity the next day for a "second chance" to get out with his sons and came to this waterfall.  When I come across waterfalls that aren't documented, I always try to search every resource I can to see it has a name.  Getting the back story from John on the history behind the name is an extra bonus.  One thing I wanted to point out is the difference some foliage can make.  John gave me permission to include a photo (see above) from that day in the blog so you can compare this one to the ones I took today.  This tells me I need to pick a good day in the other three seasons to come back and get some photos that illustrate the natural beauty of this area much better. 

White Rock Creek Cascade

Climbing back up to the trail, I continued upstream.  A little over two miles up the trail, it crosses Dry Fork, which like most creeks named "Dry" is actually anything but dry.   It had pretty good flow today, and I seriously considered doing a little exploring up it today but decided to defer that decision until the trip back to see how much time I had.  White Rock Creek Cascade is less than a half mile upstream from Second Chance Falls, not far from the Dry Fork crossing.  It was 2.5 miles on my GPS trip meter today, but remember that includes a little side trip to Second Chance Falls.  This is a spectacular waterfall, with enough flow and whitewater you can easily see it on satellite imagery and is the one you most often see photographed on White Rock Creek.  At this point, we have another 'old trail, new trail' story.  The old FS maps show the trail staying on the east side, and there is a path to the right that climbs up the steep embankment to the top of the waterfall.  But the blue trail markers (blue because this is just a spur of the OHT) follow the new route on the west (left) side of the creek upstream.  I went across the creek and up the newer trail on the way up and stayed on the east side on the way back.  Both are fine, but the old trail is less distinct and a little overgrown and has that tricky descent from the top of White Rock Creek Cascade.

White Rock Creek Falls and Grotto

White Rock Creek Falls is in a side drainage approximately a quarter-mile upstream from White Rock Creek Cascade.  The trail actually goes up above the top of the waterfall.  There is a fork with a faint trail leading off toward the creek.  That leads down to the creek, and one of the nicest camping sites I have seen.  Just upstream on the right is the grotto containing White Rock Creek Falls.  Today, it was pretty, but not that impressive due to low flow.  This is in a side drainage, and if you look at it on a topo map you will see that there is not a lot of drainage area above the waterfall.  That will make it very sensitive to the amount of recent rain, and is a good reason to make this trip shortly after a good rain.  The grotto itself is very nice and opens up right where it flows into White Rock Creek.  After spending a little time here, I headed upstream for the last of the bushwhack part of today's adventure.  The part of the creek upstream is what I consider to be the prettiest part of a very pretty creek, but since it is off the loop trail, not many people venture up this far.

Falls #4

To go very far upstream, you will need to cross the creek due to the spectacular,
 tall bluffs running along the east side of White Rock Creek.  Fortunately, there is a huge downed tree right there that you can walk across, and after going upstream on the west (left) side, there is another big tree down across the creek just downstream of Falls #4 to help you get across the creek to the east side again.  Falls #4 is a nice little six-foot waterfall on the main creek that has a slot up at the top and a huge pool below that it flows into.  I only had an 11-16mm wide lens with me, so without going swimming, I couldn't take any closeup shots of this one.  Climbing the bluff on the east (right) side, I hiked upstream around the bend in White Rock Creek and found Falls #5, a nice waterfall in very wet weather, in a side drainage on the other side.

Hesitation Falls

Less than 200 yards upstream from Falls #4 on White Rock Creek is Hesitation Falls.  This is one of those relatively short waterfalls that is still quite picturesque, or in Rick-speak "photo worthy", so if it didn't have a name already I would at least have given it a number.  I found the name Hesitation Falls in an old database of waterfalls, with no mention of where the name came from, who found it or named it, or any photos.  I have never seen any other photos of it, but this is one that spans the creek in a couple of drops and can also be clearly seen on satellite imagery.  The database had the correct GPS coordinates associated with the name Hesitation Falls, so that's the name I'll stick with going forward.  If any of you blog readers out there have more information on it, please let me know.  I always find the stories behind these features interesting.  Update - one of my readers tells me that Hesitation Falls was named by Steve Robertson on the first known kayak run on White Rock Creek in 1998.

White Rock Creek downstream of Falls #4

Hesitation Falls was as far as I had planned on venturing today, but I was still 
thinking about stopping by Dry Fork on the way back and following it upstream for a way.  Making my way alongside the creek on the way back downstream, I did pick up a faint trace trail between Falls #4 and White Rock Creek Falls.  This section of the creek has huge bluffs and cool rock features, and the creek runs along the base of the tallest cliffs on the creek.  I walked across the log to get back on the east side (left going downstream), and stayed on the east side on the old trail going back to White Rock Creek Cascade.  I stopped at the top of the cascade to get some shots from that perspective and discovered the tripod mounting plate (actually a quick release ball on my Manfrotto mini tripod) was missing from the camera bottom.  It wasn't on the tripod, either.  I had it on the tripod at Hesitation Falls, so I have no idea how it could have got unscrewed and lost.  If you go this way, please keep your eye out for it.  

White Rock Creek Cascade

I did the best I could holding the camera by hand and keeping exposure to just one second, then moved on.  But without the tripod, I wasn't about to hike all the way up Dry Fork without the camera gear I needed if I did find something worth shooting, so I decided to nix that little exploration side trip for today.  I paused to take some quick photos a couple of times, but other than that, the hike back to the parking location was non-stop and went fairly quickly.  I took the trail on the way back instead of the old logging road.  It's rougher, narrower, and rockier, but it is still a trail and is pretty easy hiking.    It took less than an hour to hike from Hesitation Falls back to where I parked the FJ out of almost four and a half hours on the trail, so that tells you a little about how much time I spend photo taking and looking around.  All in all, this is a very pleasant hike in a very beautiful locale.  It was 6.2 miles round trip, so just about right for a day hike.  I was out on the trail all day and never saw another person, but that will probably be different on a weekend.  If you have not yet hiked this area, I would highly recommend it.

GPS Track - White Rock Creek