The Lake Wedington Trail west of Fayetteville has been on my to-do list for a while and now it’s done.  Described in detail in Tim Ernst’s book, the trail runs about 7 miles north into the 16000-acre Wedington Wildlife Management Area from a large parking area on the north side of AR 16 and ends on the north peak of Twin Mountains.

At 1405 feet, the north peak towers 140 feet over its surroundings and offers views of, well, not much at all really.  There is one spot where a small gap in the trees reveals this:

That’s the south peak of Twin Mountains just left of center kinda behind the tree.  It’s only a 100′ climb so you won’t have to acclimate as much on the way to that summit.

The most scenic area is a long narrow ridge less than 3 miles in.  It’s surrounded by a small bluff and a boulder field.  The western side has many large rocks broken from the bluff and sliding down the hill, through which the trail winds.

The snow on the trail was pretty well beaten down between the trail head and the ridge –  I suspect this is a popular destination for area trail runners.  From the ridge to the second crossing of FR 1743 there was only one set of footprints.  Beyond that it was just me and the wildlife until near Twin Mountains where I came across tracks and many spent shells from a hunter.  I packed-out his trash.

You hear traffic noise at the north and south ends of the trail but not so much in between, and it’s a pretty large area so a person could probably spend a weekend wandering around in solitude here.  I didn’t go down the spur to the Illinois River this time.