Optimal Upper-1205 Route to Devon, Hamilton, Twin, and Richland Falls, plus Devon's Hollow, Richland Wilderness area, Ozarks near Lurton, Arkansas

4/12/2019 - Twin Falls, Devon Falls, Richland Falls, Hamilton Falls

GPS Coordinates:  (Latitude, Longitude, Elevation)
  Parking (Upper-1205 route):  35.82546,  -92.94733,  1936 feet
  Twin Falls: 35.80594, -92.96412,  1184 ft.
  Richland Falls: 35.80075, -92.96010,  1155 ft.
  Jim Bob (Long Devil's) Falls:  35.80804,  -92.96831,  1316 ft.
  Devon Falls:  35.81724,  -92.96145,  1435 ft.
  Don Hamilton Falls:  35.81199, -92.96375,  1320 ft.
  Big Devil's Bluff Falls:  35.81098,  -92.96294,  1322 ft.
  Mystic Falls:  35.80479,  -92.96518,  1275 ft.
  Mystic Cascades:  35.80519,  -92.96510,  1219 ft.
  Get onto trace road from FR-1205:  35.80864,  -92.94396,  1531 ft.
  Leave trace road to Hamilton Falls:  35.81261,  -92.96180,  1462 ft.
  Leave trace road to Twin Falls:  35.80931,  -92.95933,  1536 ft.
  Trail branch to the top of Long Devil's Falls: 35.80555, -92.96223,  1185 ft.

Pet Friendly:  Free roaming pets off leash should be okay if they can do some climbing and scrambling.  I would not take dogs that need to stay on a leash or dogs that aren't up to some rigorous bushwhacking.

Hiking Statistics:  From top to bottom, The Richland Wilderness Area is over 1200 feet of elevation change.  Today I hiked 9.4 miles with a "highest to lowest" elevation change of 810 feet.  Some of those miles and some of the elevation change was due to the additional exploration I did today.  The one trip here in which I hiked from the Upper-1205 parking location to Hamilton Falls and then to Twin Falls, it was 2.11 miles one-way.  I would rate this hike as a difficult bushwhack, due to the length of the hike and the ruggedness of the terrain.  As anyone that has been here will tell you, it's worth it.  

GPS files (.gpx format) - Map with these routes is at bottom of this post:
  Richland Wilderness Area waypoints
  Falling Water Creek Area waypoints
  GPS track for Twin Falls to Richland Falls along the creeks
  GPS track for Twin Falls to Richland Falls over the mountain
  GPS track from Twin Falls to Long Devil's Falls
  GPS track file for Lower FR-1205 route to Twin Falls 
  GPS track file for Upper FR-1205 to Hamilton Falls to Twin Falls
  GPS track file for Twin Falls to Upper FR-1205

Hamilton Falls - with Rick

A surprisingly large number of folks have asked me "What's the BEST route into and out of the Richland Wilderness area?"  I have done a few blog posts over the years for the Richland Wilderness, definitely one of my favorite hiking areas.  I have not posted a new blog post for it in a while because on my last post, I included links to all of the blog posts with different routes.  I have also included all those links below, but what is the best of those routes?  That depends on creek levels, your hiking ability, what time of year it is, and what you want to see.  Assuming you want to see Twin Falls, my personal favorite, and assuming you want to see all the waterfalls here with decent flow, I'll try to answer that question as well as I can in this blog post.  Today, I set out to do a little exploring, with a goal of hiking the entire drainage has Devon Falls in it just before it drains into Big Devil's Fork, and also another side drainage that has Big Devil's Bluff Falls where it spills into the Big Devils Fork canyon.

Twin Falls

When looking at the route for the "Upper-1205 route" that I planned on using today, I noticed it could use a little updating.  I had written that blog post over five years ago, and it is somewhat crude by today's standards.   The parking location for that route is only a half mile down the road from where I intended to hike into the top of Devon's Hollow, and it is a good "dry land" location to hike back to on my way out.  It would also be just right for hiking the Big Devil's Bluff side drainage either on my way to Twin Falls or on the way out.   I have seen some nice little waterfalls on that creek as I have crossed it on my way to Twin Falls from Hamilton Falls, but I never actually hiked the whole creek.  Today, I set out to do all those things and have some fun in one of my favorite playgrounds.  I did have a lot of fun today, but hiking up that steep mountain coming out of Twin Falls over that awful rock jumble was not much fun, and got me to thinking about this fabled "optimal route".  So here goes!

Devon Falls

The Richland Creek Wilderness was created by an act of Congress in 1984, giving us almost 12,000 acres of beautiful Arkansas Ozarks that the wilderness act protections keep pristine and beautiful.  I have made no secret that I consider this area and the Upper Buffalo Wilderness my favorite areas to hike.  The Wilderness Act of 1964 gives these lands the ultimate in protection, preventing any mechanical equipment of any kind being brought into it, and basically letting the land me only as nature will have it.  No logging, no mining, no roads, trails, ATV's, 4WD's, no building, no development, nothing but foot and horse traffic.  Trail making and/or maintenance is forbidden, as is trail marking.  "Leave no trace" is actually the law in these places.  That protection and the plethora of fantastic sights nature has provided in these areas is what makes them my favorites.  I like my nature wild.  Note that you can't blaze trails, but in many of these areas, enough people hike along what were old trace roads back in the day that "volunteer" trails are visible from the foot and/or horse traffic on them.  I'll be using some of those volunteer trails for the optimal route.

I have documented five routes to Twin Falls on previous posts.  Today, I will finally lay out what I think would be an "optimal route".  If you are curious about the other five routes to this great hiking area, here's a quick review and links to the blog posts where I have detailed directions:

  1) Hike down from Hill Cemetery

  2) Richland Creek Trail from Richland Campground

  3) Direct hike from FR-1205 (the "Upper FR-1205 Route")

  4) Hike down the spur from Sandstone Castle

  5) Direct hike from FR-1205 (the "Lower FR-1205 Route")

Why so many?  Well, some are well known; a couple of routes are detailed in Tim Ernst's excellent hiking guide Arkansas Waterfalls.  Those will certainly get you there, but there are some caveats:

• In order for the waterfalls to look their best, you need to go when there is a fair amount of flow in the creeks.  
• When there is a fair amount of flow in the creeks, the route along Richland Creek, which requires you to cross both Richland Creek and Falling Water Creek, is unsafe.  If there is a good flow in Richland Creek, it is deep and fast.
• The route from Hill Cemetery does not require crossing those creeks, but you have to drive to Hill Cemetery on a road that rarely, if ever, gets maintained.  When it is wet, it gets very sloppy and folks have got mired in the mud there.
• You can park at Iceledo Gap, but that adds almost two miles to an already long and strenuous hike.  
• Hiking down from Sandstone Castle is rough and long.  The hike back up from Twin Falls is even rougher and a very steep climb out, then you still have to hike back to the road, an additional 2.5 miles.
• Hiking either up or down from Sandstone Castles to Long Devils Falls (aks Jim Bob Falls) or Hamilton Falls is just flat awful.  Don't do that.

All that is why I recommend one of two other land routes (i.e. routes with no need to cross Richland Creek).  I have hiked two routes directly from parking spots on FR-1205, which is the road between Iceledo Gap and the Richland Creek Campground on Falling Water Road.  I call those two the "Upper 1205" and "Lower 1205 routes.  For a few trips, I preferred the Lower-1205 route because it was a straighter shot to Twin Falls and had a lot more hiking on the level.  That is still a good route, but I have found it is getting overgrown somewhat and is hard to follow during the "leaves on" seasons.  At one time, horse riders kept this trail fairly clear, but they seem to have forgotten about it in recent years.  A lot of folks have been telling me they have been following my track for the Upper-1205 route, so I decided to use that one today.  The Upper-1205 route is also less than a mile down the road from Dickey Junction, where the top of Devon's Hollow is, and that was one of my goals for today.

To get there: 

• Take Highway 7 north and turn onto Highway 123 north at Lurton.  
• From the 'T' where you can turn left to Hwy 7 or right to Hwy 123, turn right and go 1.5 miles.  
• Turn right on NC5070 (aka FR-1200, aka CR-36, aka Herbie Hampton Rd, aka Assembly of God Church Road). 
• Take NC5070 for 6.8 miles, then turn right on NC5080 (aka FR-1205).  
• Go 4.4 miles on NC5080 (FR-1205) and turn right into the parking location and trailhead.  

Parking location for Upper-1205 route

If you know where Dickey Junction is, this trailhead is one mile south of Dickey Junction on FR-1205 or 2.8 miles past Iceledo Gap.  FR-1205 continues on to the Richland Campground and Falling Water Road, but my experience is that the road from Lurton is usually in much better shape than coming in from the south.  The pull-off on the west side of FR-1205 where the parking location is used to be an old road back in the day.  Of course, now that it is a wilderness area, no roads can be maintained in the area.  Where that old trace road runs along the spur of the mountain between Devon's Hollow and Richland Creek's valley makes a really handy hiking route, and that is the way this route will go.  I'll document my explorations today later, but for those just looking for what I think is the "optimal route" to get you to all the waterfalls and features in the Richland area, I'll lay that out first.  I hiked the various segments of this today, just not all in sequence and with a lot of extra exploration. 

This "optimal route" isn't the shortest round trip, but it is close. I have included a map of it below.  What it does for you is:

• Avoids the big Richland Creek and Falling Water Creek crossings
• Avoids the boggy road to Hill Cemetery
• Avoids the 'rock jumble' on the steep climb directly up the mountain from Twin Falls
• Overall, I think this makes the least strenuous route to visit all the major waterfalls in the upper Richland Wilderness

Optimal route from the Upper-1205 parking location:
(35.82546,  -92.94733)

1. Start at the Upper-1205 parking location and hike down the spur of the mountain to where it intersects the old trace road that comes from Hill Cemetery and wraps around to the bench high above Richland Creek.  Enough people have followed my track that there is a visible trail.  That would be this track segment.
2. Once you hit the old trace road, turn right (north) on it and follow it to Devon Falls, then backtrack and go back down the trace road until you break away from it to go to Hamilton Falls.  That would be this track segment.
3. Go on what I think is the best track from Hamilton Falls to Twin Falls, up on the bluff above Big Devil's Fork.  Hiking along Big Devil's Fork itself is a really rough hike if the water is even moderately high.  When you cross the drainage with Big Devil's Bluff Falls, you can go down to where it spills over the bluff and see it, or do that on the hike out.  That best track between Hamilton Falls and Twin Falls is part of this track segment.
4. From Twin Falls, go behind the two waterfalls to cross Devil's Fork, hike down Devil's Fork and upstream on Richland Creek to Richland Falls.  There is a decent volunteer trail there, easy to follow.  I prefer this route segment along the creek, but there is also a horse trail route that goes up over the mountain by this track segment.  It is more direct, but is more climbing and not as scenic.
5. Go back to Twin Falls.  From there, IF you are a glutton for punishment, you can hike up Long Devil's Fork to Long Devil Falls (aka Jim Bob Falls).  Mystic Falls and Mystic Cascade is in a side drainage along the way.  This is a rough, brushy hike with a few crossings over Long Devil's Fork.  If you're getting tired, just skip this extra hike.  This track segment will take you there.
6. Go back to Twin Falls, cross behind the waterfalls, and go back along that "best track" toward Hamilton Falls until you get back to the drainage that flows over Big Devil's Bluff Falls.  Follow that drainage upstream until you get back to the old trace road.  That track is part of the "best route" track segment between Hamilton and Twin Falls.
7. Once back on the trace road, go right (south) on it to where the upper-1205 route comes down the mountain, turn left on that route and hike up the spur and back to the Upper-1205 parking location.  Easy-peasy, right?

That's my take on an optimal route.  See the map below for this route.  Someday I'll forego any additional side exploration and hike just this route to get a good track and good statistics on it.  If any of you do that, please send me the data.  

Ruins of old house
The Wilderness Area boundary skirts around this 

Now, for today's adventure in the Richland Wilderness!  Today, I hiked back up the road from the Upper-1205 parking location so that I could start at the top of Devon's Hollow.   About halfway back up FR-1205 from the parking spot to Dickey Junction, there is a trace road leading back into the wilderness area.  What makes this a little different is that there is a tiny area of private land, less than an acre, about a tenth of a mile off FR-1205 down into Devon's Hollow.  The wilderness area boundary actually breaks away from the FR-1205 roadside and goes around this trace road and the plot of private land.  Except for this and Hill Cemetery, and the road to Hill Cemetery, the thousands of acres west of FR-1205 in the Devil's Fork drainage area is in the designated wilderness area.  The boundary actually goes along both sides of the road to Hill Cemetery so it is not included in the Richland Wilderness Area.  What I found on the little piece of private land was an old house, now completely collapsed.  Someone lived here for a while after the wilderness area was formed, but it's all going back to nature now.  The trace road continues past it and crosses the top of Devon's Hollow.  

Devon's Hollow Falls #2

Hiking down Devon's Hollow along the creek, I soon came to the first waterfall.  Falls #1 (35.83045, -92.95497) is a small double-tier waterfall in a feeder creek to the main creek in this drainage.  Falls #1 is severely outclassed by the other great waterfalls in the area but is kind of cool in that the water for it comes from a spring at the base of a bluff at the top of the waterfall.  Continuing downstream, I found the hiking conditions not all that bad for a bushwhack in a wild area.  It has been only 35 years since this became a wilderness area.  As time goes on, trees will grow larger, choking out more of the undergrowth, and returning it to the condition it was in as virgin forest.  Today, all the trees were just starting to fully leaf out, and redbuds and dogwoods were still in bloom.  I found an old trace road on the left side of the hollow and followed that down the drainage as much as I could, keeping the creek in sight.  The next waterfall, Falls #2 (35.82144, -92.95445) in this hollow, was also somewhat small, right on the main creek about 3/4 mile downstream of the first one.  That was the last one I found before coming to Devon Falls.  As far as water features, exploring this hollow was a bust.  That being said, it was about 1.5 miles of trekking through some beautiful woods that very few people have laid eyes on.  Certainly, it was time well spent.

Big Devil's Bluff drainage Falls #1

From Devon Falls, I hiked down the Hill Cemetery Trail to the next drainage that I wanted to explore, the one feeding Big Devil's Bluff Falls.  When you go along the bench on the bluff between Hamilton Falls and Richland Falls, you will cross this small creek.  More often than not, I have crossed just below a really pretty little waterfall, which I have previously photographed and marked coordinates for.  Every time I did that, I asked myself "are there any other waterfalls upstream?"  As it turns out, yes, there is.  About halfway between the old trace road (Hill Cemetery Trail) and Big Devil's Bluff Falls, I found a nice waterfall, about 14 feet tall.  I called it Unnamed Falls #1 (35.81121, -92.96195) in Big Devil's Bluff drainage for now.  The smaller one only 150 feet further downstream I simply labeled as Falls #2 (35.81115, -92.96237) in this drainage for now.  Both are beautiful waterfalls and are a nice bonus to making this the 'hike back' drainage for my optimal route.  I kind of wish I had thought of putting all these segments into an optimal route before I left for today's hike, instead of figuring it all out afterward.  Next time! 

Hamilton Falls

I continued all the way downstream on the 'hike back' drainage and peered over the edge of the bluff at Big Devil's Bluff Falls, which was flowing well today.  My new exploration for today now being complete, I hiked upstream along the bluff to Hamilton Falls.  Hamilton Falls is one of those waterfalls that, it seems, is always beautiful, no matter how dry or wet it is.  It has a wide, very flat top that makes the best use of whatever flow Big Devil's Fork has.  Today, we weren't hurting for water.  In fact, although it had been quite a few days since we got any rain, everything was flowing very well.  Big Devil's Fork and Long Devil's Fork have very large drainage areas, so they generally have good flow well into the dryer summer months.  Since the creek was flowing pretty well today, I went up on the bluff and hiked what I have as the best route between Hamilton Falls to Twin Falls.  Twin Falls never disappoints, and today it was gorgeous.  I had stepped in some deep water and soaked both socks, so I took my boots and socks off and let them dry out while I wandered around barefoot taking photos and just enjoying the tranquility and beauty of this place.
  

Twin Falls

I had already spent a good deal of time exploring Devon's Hollow and the Big Devil's Bluff drainage, so I opted out of heading upstream on Long Devil's Fork to see the waterfalls there.  I have made a few trips upstream here, and it is definitely worth the effort, but I was already running a little short on time and energy today.  It is a somewhat rough hike up the creek, with some thick undergrowth in spots and a few creek crossings occasionally to get to the best hiking condition.  Mystic Cascade is in a side drainage on the left, close to where it flows into Long Devil's Fork, and Mystic Falls is a short distance upstream in a small box canyon.  Further upstream is Long Devil's Falls, also known as Jim Bob Falls to some.  Some people call the left waterfall of Twin Falls "Long Devil's Falls" and the right twin "Big Devil's Falls".  Whatever you call it, this is a really nice waterfall across Long Devil's fork that generally always has good flow and looks great.  

Richland Falls

As I mentioned, I opted out of this extra little side trip to Jim Bob Falls, but I did hike along Devil's Fork and Richland Creek to Richland Falls.  You can go behind the two waterfalls at Twin Falls and cross Devil's Fork while keeping relatively dry.  Once on the other side, of course, you have to take some photos from that perspective.  Along that west side of Devil's Fork, there is a good volunteer trail that will take you down to the junction with Richland Creek, then upstream to Richland Falls.  At one point along Richland Creek, it appears the trail wants you to leave the creek side and go up on top of the bluff.  It does, and you need to follow it up on top of the bluff or you will run out of room next to the creek.  You pass a camping location there, then the trail takes you back down next to the creek and Richland Falls.  This is a waterfall that spans a very wide section of Richland Creek and spills over the entire width in an eight-foot waterfall.  After enjoying the scenery here, I headed back to Twin Falls the way I had hiked out.

Richland Falls

From Twin Falls, I made my way back to where I parked, going directly from Twin Falls up the mountain on the Upper 1205 route.   Climbing the mountain to get from Twin Falls back up to the old trace road is the most unpleasant part of that route.  It is a steep climb to start with, and the rock jumble in this area makes it all the more difficult.  This was the point I started thinking about bypassing this mess by going back along the better route between Twin Falls and Hamilton Falls, hiking up the creek upstream from Big Devil's Bluff Falls, and then taking the old trace road back to where it intersects the Upper-1205 route.  It will add a little distance, but there are some nice falls to see in the hike-back drainage, and overall it should be a much more pleasant hike.  All in all, this was still another great day to be out in the wilderness, in one of my favorite 'happy places'.  I'm generally a little tired when I finish this hike, but always happy.  I have been here a bazillion times, but I'll be back again.  This is one of those places like the Upper Buffalo Wilderness that you just can't get enough of.  

If you hike the "optimal route" I have laid out above, please give me some feedback.  As I said, this is one of my favorite areas and I'm always open to making it better, safer, or more enjoyable.  I plan on hiking this area well into my 90's.

"Optimal" Route for the Richland Wilderness
Blue - Upper 1205 parking to old trace road
Red - Trace Road to Devon Falls and Hamilton Falls
Yellow - Best route from Hamilton Falls to Twin Falls
Green - High route to Richland Falls
Black - Low route to Richland Falls
Purple - Route to Long Devil's Falls and Mystic Falls
Yellow - route from Twin Falls up Big Devil's Bluff side drainage

GPS Tracks for land routes to Twin Falls
Red - Hill Cemetery to Twin Falls
Yellow - Upper FR-1205 route to Hamilton and Twin Falls
Blue - Upper FR-1205 route to Twin Falls
Black - Lower FR-1205 to Twin Falls

GPS Tracks for my routes into the Richland Creek Wilderness

GPS Track for Today's Hike