Just got back this afternoon from my semi-annual trip up to Arkansas to visit the Eagle Rock Loop. This wasn't the best weekend as far a a weather forecast looked, but I had to wedge the 3 day weekend in between a bunch of other mandatory travel, so...
And... I had a hiking parther! This was Pamela's first real backpacking experience and she made the loop look easy...
Fairly short and somewhat sweet...
Arrived at the Little Mo Falls trailhead around 10am Friday. It was pretty warm and really humid, but the trailhead was completely deserted. Started hiking around 10:20 or so... Little Mo was really low, with no wet crossings until just before Winding Stair. We ran into a two or three small groups traveling the opposite direction. Arrived at Winding Stair before 4pm after hiking 11.98 miles by the GPS odometer along trail that was the most overgrown I've ever seen it. Set up camp then played in the Little Mo for a while before dinner. Had a trio of guys walk thru as it was getting dark (around 7:30pm?) and they were our shadow for the rest of the trip. We got in the hammocks around 8:30pm. Warm night... never used any sort of over cover - just my 40* HG Crowsnest underneath.
It started raining around 7am Saturday morning, about the time we were getting up. It rained through breakfast and through camp tear down, and then of course, stopped as we were hiking away around 8:00am. Our shadows got out of camp ahead of us, but we passed them on the Viles Branch just before turning right onto the Athens-Big Fork trail. We ran into a weather pattern along the six big ups and downs of the A-BF trail. Sunny and HOT on the climbs, and breezy and cool on the downs. EVERY CLIMB and every descent. Never seen anything like it. We took three breaks along the A-BF - at the Eagle Rock Vista, lunch at Blaylock Creek, and a water break at Long Creek. We walked down off of the A-BF trail at 3:30pm to a group of ATV riders riding their 4 wheelers on a HIKER ONLY trail... really??? They were looking for the Little Mo Falls and were only FOUR AND A HALF MILES off course. We politely told them how to get there ON THE ROAD, then made our way to a campsite along the Little Mo trail. We finished up the day walking almost 14 miles according to the GPS. It had cooled nicely, we heard thunder off in the distance, and went about our business - camp set up, fire wood gathering, and the like. By 6:30pm, we had cooked dinner, had a nice small fire going, and were just enjoying the remaining light. Heard our shadows setting up camp just up the trail from us. Just before 8pm, I felt ONE raindrop hit the top of my head. Five seconds later it was pouring buckets. No warning... no thunder... too dark to tell it had gotten cloudy.
At this point we say thank you to Brandon @ Warbonnet and Brian @ OES for spectacular Spinn tarps. Not a drop on the hammocks in about 4 hours of hard rain.
So... we got in the hammocks about an hour earlier than planned and listened to the rain for a while. We were camped really close to the river, and I was a little worried about flooding, but it all worked out.
Got up at 7am Sunday morning to a wet campsite, but dry hammocks and gear. Had breakfast and broke camp and hiked out around 8:30am. Had a short 3.5 miles to complete the loop and get to the car. We finished up before 10am, and found our shadows ahead of us at the trailhead with a fire going and one of the guys holding his socks over the flames????? Turns out that they were hammocking as well, but two of them had catastrophic tarp failure during the rain. They ended up packing up in the rain, hiking the forest road down to the Little Mo Falls trailhead, and bivouacking at the trailhead (nuff said there). They had a long, wet, cold night and I'm glad they were all safe this morning.
Oh... anyone know what these critter are? They were on various small tree branches at our camp Saturday...
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Originally Posted by ^shane^
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