Rick's Hiking Blog: Grimmet Springs Area Waterfalls, Ozarks north of Dover, Arkansas

3/14/2019 - Grimmet Springs Hollow Waterfalls

GPS Coordinates:  (Latitude, Longitude, Elevation)
  Parking location:  35.504632,-93.153892, 977 ft.
Falls #1:  35.506783,-93.154270, 810 ft.
Falls #2:  35.508060,-93.154787
Falls #3:  35.509578,-93.149930
Falls #4:  35.509625,-93.149729
Falls #5:  35.510211,-93.148603, 649 ft.
Old Trace Road: 35.510119,-93.148599, 661 ft.
Falls #6:  35.510446,-93.145270, 720 ft.
Falls #7:  35.511081,-93.144949
Falls #8:  35.511479,-93.144659, 833 ft.
Falls #9:  35.510214,-93.143952
Falls #10:  35.510267,-93.142212
Falls #11:  35.510221,-93.141963
Falls #12:  35.510413,-93.141759
Falls #13: 35.508384,-93.139575
Falls #14: 35.508703,-93.139417
Falls #15:  35.507397,-93.137720, 825 ft.
Falls #16:  35.507580,-93.137463
Falls #17:  35.507795,-93.135991, 862 ft.

Pet Friendly: Dogs off leash should be okay. If your dog needs to be on a leash, it will be inadvisable to take it because of the steepness and ruggedness of the terrain. Boomer had a little difficulty in a couple of places scrambling up and around big boulders, but he managed to find a way. Your dog's mileage may vary.

Hiking Statistics: Boomer and I hiked 4.6 miles today, mostly along the creeks in each prong of the hollow. The minimum-to-maximum elevation difference was 435 feet, with a fair amount of going up on bluffs and into side drainages, then back down to the creek. The return around the top of the hollow to the parking location in on an old logging road, making up about 1/3 of the hike. The rest was all a bushwhack, usually in rough terrain and rock-hopping along the creek. I would rate this a moderate bushwhack.

GPS files (.gpx format) - See maps at the bottom of this blog post
Grimmet Springs Hollow waypoints
Grimmet Springs Hollow GPS track

Links to blog posts for nearby areas:

Rough Hollow Waterfalls
Longpool Falls
Twister Falls and Upper Longpool Creek

Falls #1

I have been trying to get out more to some of the areas in the western Ozarks since I have kind of ignored that great trekking area the last couple of years. But it seems like they have been getting somewhat less rain recently than we have around our home north of Dover. When I went to Christmas Falls a few days ago, the amount of flow in the waterfalls was somewhat disappointing. Today, I opted to stay a little closer to home. Really close, in fact; this is less than 10 miles from our house. While we were driving back from a hike a couple of weeks ago, my friend Dan Frew pointed out a little unnamed hollow off Big Piney Creek. He had recently hiked through the hollow and found a few waterfalls, so I thought I would go take a look today. To be clear, this is an unnamed hollow. That doesn't seem to work well for my blog readers since there are quite a few unnamed hollows, so I'm referring to it as Grimmet Springs Hollow since Grimmet Springs is near the mouth of this hollow on Old Highway 7, where the hollow drains into Big Piney.

Boomer (our German Shepherd) and I loaded up in the FJ Cruiser and drove north. As I mentioned, it is a very short ride. The driving directions are really simple as well. To get there, we'll start at Dover:

From the junction of Highways 7 and 27 (aka the Dover town square, where the PDQ and Dover fire station is), go north on Highway 7 for 6.4 miles.
Turn left on New Three Knob Mountain Road. This is a paved road to start, then becomes a pretty good gravel road.
Go 2.7 miles on New Three Knob Mountain Road and park off the road where a 4WD road intersects on the right. This is the parking location.

It is only 0.9 miles further on New Three Knob Mountain Road to Old Highway 7 (aka Longpool Road) if you want even less dirt road.

Falls #15

Grimmet Springs Hollow has two major prongs (see the map below), one on the west side and the main prong on the north side. I wanted to check out both prongs, and explore some of the side drainages on the larger north prong. My plan today was just to make a big loop, down one prong and back up the other. The 4WD road where I parked looks like an old logging road, and loops around the top of the prongs and forks in the hollow. Boomer and I started by taking this trail around to the top of the west prong and starting our hike downstream. having done that, the creek in this prong is pretty but other than a couple of small waterfalls there isn't much to see until you get down to Falls #1, which we found about a quarter mile downstream from where the old road crossed the top of the west prong. I think you are better off just hiking down into the hollow from the parking location. The bank on the west side seems to be more open with a better slope and is easier hiking than right alongside the creek. My advice would be just to angle downslope toward Falls #1 from the git-go.

Falls #1

The bluffline break we came down through to get to the base of Falls #1 is also on the left (west) side as you go downstream, so hiking straight to it works for that as well. Falls #1 is a beautiful waterfall tumbling over a fairly high bluffline, one of the most picturesque waterfalls we saw today. Even if you don't want to make the whole big loop as I did today, this one is well worth the trip down and back to the New Three Knob Mountain Road. There are a couple of small waterfalls just downstream of it that adds to the beauty of the area. Other than this one, there was only one other waterfall in the west prong, Falls #2, that I thought was photo-worthy today. Falls #2 was about 150 yards downstream from Falls #1. Boomer and I continued hiking downstream on the west prong, cutting around the spur between the prongs as we approached the junction of the two prongs.

Falls #11

As we rounded the spur between prongs, I couldn't help but notice the tall, sheer, bluffs rising up at the top of the ridge. In the north prong, those big bluffs are prominent on both sides, but particularly so on the north side. I hiked up to it while exploring one side drainage today, but it was apparent that there was more to see here than what I had time for today. Someday in the drier seasons, this will be a good place to come to for a hike, just exploring the big bluffs on the north wall of this hollow. We followed the old trace road for a short distance until I small waterfalls on the creek below, then descended down to hike along the creek. Falls #3 and Falls #4 were long, tall, cascades where side drainages fell steeply down to the main creek. Falls #5 is on the main creek and is more of a huge rock with water flowing off all sides than it is a waterfall. It is about a half mile upstream from the junction of the two prongs in this hollow.

Falls #5

Looking across the creek from Falls #5, I could see the distinctive flat cutback of an old road just a dozen feet above the creek bed. Climbing up to it, we utilized that to hike further upstream. This old trace road probably came all the way up from the mouth of the hollow near Big Piney Creek at one time, an old logging and wagon road to access the upper parts of this hollow. It has been many years since it was used for anything, however. There are fairly good sized trees growing out of the middle of where it was carved into the bank, and in one place the roadbed has slid off into the creek, leaving only about a foot or two of the old trace to hike along. Old trace roads like this aren't usable for any kind of mechanized vehicle anymore, but they generally make much better hiking surfaces for people and horses. Just having a relatively flat, low-slope surface without jumbles of loose rock and boulders makes hiking much easier. We followed this just above the creek, sometimes dipping down to creek level, another quarter mile upstream to Falls #6, in a side drainage on the right.

Falls #16

Falls #6 could have used more water today, but I noticed all the water flowing over it disappeared immediately into the ground. Looking back across the creek on the left, there was a more sizable tributary drainage, but it was also completely dry. Looking higher up, I could see the glint of white water in the upper part of the side creek, so Boomer and I ventured up to check it out. We found Falls #7 and Fall #8 up in this side drainage and marveled again at some of the large bluffs high on the ridge here. Continuing upstream, over the next quarter mile we found Falls #9, Falls #10, Falls #11 and Falls #12. Another Quarter mile above that, Falls #13 and Falls #14 were in a side drainage on the left. If you look at a topo map, these tributaries on the left side actually have a fairly large drainage area above them. Some of the waterfalls in them were a little lacking for water today, but the creeks are starting to dry up now. With some spring rains, these waterfalls in the side drainages might look really good.

Stacked rock berm near Falls #15 and Falls #16

Just upstream from Falls #13, the north prong splits into two major forks, with each having a nice waterfall at that point. Falls #15 is in the smaller fork on the right, with a huge sentinel bluff standing above it where the creeks fork. Just upstream on the main fork is a shelter cave, with Falls #16 at the upstream end of the overhang. There are some signs of human habitation here as well. Across the creek from the shelter cave, there is a stacked-rock berm along the creek. Above this old berm wall, there is only a distance of about four or five feet to the bluff behind it, so I'm not sure what the purpose might have been. Flood waters and erosion can change the face of the land in these hollows in just a few decades, so there is no telling what this area looked like when that berm wall was stacked. Under the overhang of the shelter, it looks like there had been some activity at one time. If I had to guess, I would say this was the site of a still. It seems like we find a place where a still had been operated in almost every hollow.

Falls #17

Falls #16 is a bank-to-bank kind of waterfall, so Boomer and I climbed above the berm wall and then above the bluff to continue our hike upstream. Approximately 150 yards upstream, we found Fall #17, a small two-tiered waterfall. What makes this one unique is that it had a long section of pipeline pipe laying across the entire thing. I'm used to finding all kinds of stuff in the Ozarks. Nature has a lot of weird things in itself, and everywhere mankind goes they tend to leave their trash and anything else that happens to get away from them. This was a section of heavy gauge pipe, 3/16" wall thickness about a foot in diameter and about 25 feet long. Looking it up in the tables, that chunk of pipe has to weigh well over 1,000 pounds, so I can only imagine the forces necessary to move it downstream to where it is now. There is a pipeline laid under the creek about 50 yards upstream, and no doubt it got away from the construction crew somehow and ended up here. From the amount of rust on the welding bevel at the end of the pipe, it must have been here quite a few years. It sucks that some crew left it to clutter up our wilderness, but I'm not sure how it could be retrieved at this point.

Falls #16

Moving upstream from Falls #17, Boomer and I soon crossed the pipeline right-of-way. We continued on upstream to where the old logging road wrapped around the tops of the forks, the one we parked on earlier and turned right onto it to hike back to the FJ. Crossing back over the pipeline right-of-way, I looked down and the creek was less than 200 feet away. Another lesson learned I can pass on is that there is no need to bushwhack upstream until you find the old 4WD road. After Falls #17 (Pipeline Falls?), there isn't really anything else to see, and it's easy to just go up the pipeline access which will be kept clear. The hike back to the parking location on the logging road is almost two miles, but it is mostly on the level and easy hiking. This was a pretty cool little area, unexpectedly nice, rugged and isolated in an area so close to the River Valley. I'll need to return to the larger waterfalls when it greens up some, as well as to do some further exploration in the side drainages. Exploring the big bluffs on the north rim will be a fun hike for one of those days when the creeks are all dry and we need to get out somewhere.