A Wild and ‘Woolum’ Weekend Along the Buffalo

I’ve been so busy that I haven’t been backpacking since late November or early December of ’09. But, finally, this past Saturday and Sunday I got out for an overnight solo at Woolum in Buffalo River National Park.

It’s been so long since I pulled on the boots and hit a trail that I wasn’t sure the legs would cooperate. But to my surprise I wasn’t at all sore when I finished traversing the four miles from the trailhead to the spot where I decided to pitch camp. The trail? It was one I’d not been on before, though I’ve been at or through Woolum numerous times. The trailhead from where I started is located to the west northwest of Snowball, Arkansas, just under five miles along Richland Road and is marked by a single sign post pointing the way north to “Woolum — 4 miles.”

If you look at the new Trails Illustrated map of the Buffalo National River East, the trail is shown by a broken red line heading north from Richland Road. The map’s legend indicates that such a line connotes a ‘primitive horse trail.” Out in the woods, it is actually an old road, and the Park Service has done a real good job of keeping it cleared.

Richland Road itself is a gravel road that has been kept in reasonably good shape and is thus easy to drive with just a car despite the fact that about a 100-yard section of the road was taken out about a year or so ago by a landslide. It’s been repaired, but I will not be surprised if a real heavy rain moves the land some more at some point.

If you ever get a chance to hike in the Richland area, it won’t take long for you to realize how much the landscape has been altered through time by forces of nature causing the land to shift. In fact, a little over a year ago the Richland Creek Campground located in the Richland Creek Wilderness had to be closed when the side of a mountain collapsed and blocked the road less than two miles to the south of the campground along the east side of the wilderness area. I first learned of this event a year ago last Christmas while hiking the Ozark Highlands Trail (OHT). I was headed north along the segment of the trail that parallels the east side of the wilderness when suddenly I found myself entering a surreal landscape. It was a sight to behold, but then, that’s a topic for another time. Now back to the past weekend’s excursion.

The hike this past weekend along the primitive horse trail was relatively easy as the old road that is now a trail was constructed with little elevation change. The only real change in elevation begins about a half mile from the river resulting in the trail gradually descending 250 to 300 feet to Woolum on the Buffalo.

Initially, I had planned to camp in the big flat area across the river from Jamison Bluff in what was marked on the map as ‘The Pouroff.’ On the map it looked like I would be able to hike from where the trail ended to The Pouroff by bushwhacking along what appeared on the map to be a narrow stretch of terrain between the river and the foot of the mountain to the south. What I found, though, was that there was no such narrow stretch. The river was up due to recent rains, and I quickly learned that the only way I was going to get from where I was at the trail’s end to where I wanted to be was either by swimming the river or by going up and over the mountain in front of me. Neither option looked that great to me, so I opted to turn around and follow the trail back to the west and down into the flat area lying along Richland Creek. It was there I pitched camp among the hawthorns.

Hawthorns have thorns, lots of thorns, lots of big thorns. Setting up the tent required special attention be given to the ground under the tent. Specifically, segments of thorn-laden branches have broken and fallen to the ground through time, and the grasses have done a good job of growing over and hiding those needle-sharp surprises. Needless to say, overlooking one of those while pitching the tent would have left me with a flat sleeping mat and, perhaps, a little punctured pride. Fortunately, the only poke I got while searching through the grasses for the errant thorns was in my finger — twice.

The day had been beautiful and relatively warm — somewhere in the upper 60’s. So, once camp was set, I headed over to Richland Creek to wash off and fix a meal. While I was cleaning up, I noticed the billowy white tops of some clouds peaking over the mountain tops to the west. I knew rain was in the forecast, but I didn’t pay much heed to the weather. I was more focused on getting cleaned up and deciding what to eat. However, no sooner had I started cooking some grub than I heard what sounded like thunder in the distance. I looked back over my shoulder and saw that the puffy white clouds that dotted the sky only minutes earlier had turned into a dark, foreboding mass. I did my best to ignore what looked and sounded like a storm brewing by keeping my focus on what was to become dinner, but just as suddenly as the clouds had changed in the sky, drops of rain began dampening me and everything around. Another look over my shoulder was all I needed to realize that all the denial in the world was not going to stop the inevitable. Another small clue was that the wind had gone from being mild to attention getting.

I decided it was time to leave the food cooking on low flame and get back to the tent to secure the rainfly. With that task accomplished, back I flew to my meal and backpack. I grabbed my rain jacket and pants from my bag while getting pelted by some wind-driven drops of moisture, slipped into both as quickly as I could, and no sooner did I get them on but the sky opened and down came the deluge. By that time my meal had cooked to my satisfaction, so with my back to the wind and rain, I sat and ate with water pouring from the hood of my jacket into my pot of food. It was great! What energy! Lightning, thunder, wind, and rain undulating all around. By the time I finished eating, the rain had subsided, so I cleaned up my mess, filled my water bladder, and headed to my tent to get in a little reading. As I was crawling into the tent, lightning lit up the sky, thunder clapped, and the rain poured once again.

There’s something about tents and heavy rains that have a relaxing effect on me, and after reading for what may have been about an hour, I must have nodded off to sleep. All I know is that it was dark when I came to, so I decided to call it an evening. What a nice night it was with a goose or two honking their way across the sky at times, the soothing sounds of the water rolling down the creek, the winds and occasional rains smattering the tent, and the hoots of owls as they talked back and forth through the darkness. There was even the loud screech of some animal in the woods nearby that occurred soon after I heard the first haunting song of an owl. I’ll never know what it was that made what sounded like a call of desperation, but I couldn’t help wondering if a squirrel asleep in its nest suddenly fell prey to an owl. Actually, there was one long screech followed several seconds by a second, much shorter screech that my imagination told me was possibly the last dying call of that fated squirrel. After that, all was quiet but for the wind and the sound of rushing, rolling water in the distance.

By morning, the sky had calmed, so I decided to eat, drink my tea, and pack before the heavens offered another surprise. I was on the trail about an hour after getting up and about. On the way in there had been several stretches of trail that made walking in water almost mandatory, but on the way out, much of the trail was like a miniature creek. I have to say there is something to be said for boots that are as waterproof as they are touted to be.

Well, about an hour and a half later I was back to the car and on the road to home thinking about the fresh elk tracks I had seen on the trail and the deer I had scared up the morning before, the snake I almost stepped on while walking along water rushing from a hollow near camp, and the turkey I heard earlier that morning while packing to leave. It wasn’t long, though, and my thoughts turned to the next adventure. After all, there has to be a way down into ‘The Pouroff.”

Till next time, catch you out on the trail…Dr. Brown