I hiked the Kyle’s Landing to Pruitt section of the BRT with a group of Sierra Clubbers from the Kansas City area on a 2-night trip. Temperatures near 80 and little shade from the still-developing forest canopy made conditions mighty uncomfortable.
Much has happened just east of Tyler Bend in the last month!
Construction work on the Buffalo River trail resumed February 7 and I’ve spent a couple weekends working there so far. Ken Smith established a temporary headquarters near St Joe, Ark and will move to the group campground at Tyler Bend when it opens on March 14.
I went on a little day hike with a couple other members of the Northwest Arkansas Hiking Group. We started at the Centerpoint trail head a couple miles north of Ponca, descended to the spur that leads out to Big Bluff and the Goat Trail, then back to the main trail and further down to Granny Henderson’s cabin. Along the way, we lost about 1200′ of elevation, making for an invigorating hike out.
My third trip on the Elk River Trail (along Elk City Lake and the Elk River near Independence KS) but my first time hiking the whole 15-mile length. Previously, I had done only the eastern 9.5 mile section. The weather was sunny and cloudless with overnight lows of 30 and 21.
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.
I planned it as a 3 day trip but I managed it in 2 – hiking from the FR 1201 trail head to the Buffalo River at the Wollum Ford (maps 15 & 16) yesterday and hiking back today – a 26.5 mile round trip. My arrival at the Buffalo also marked the completion of my first section-hike of the 165-mile Ozark Highlands Trail. I hiked 5 of the 8 sections this season (since fall 2013) and 6 in the last calendar year. 4 sections were done solo.
The target this weekend was the Ozark Highlands Trail from Ben Hur trail head to the FR1201 (aka Stack Rock) trail head – roughly the eastern half of section 7 and western third of section 8 (maps 13-15). The trail skirts the southern and part of the eastern boundary of the Richland Creek Wilderness. This area features great scenery and very steep terrain in the Falling Water Creek and Richland Creek watersheds.
I hiked the western half of Ozark Highlands Trail section 7 – from the Fairview campground to the Ben Hur trail head and back (maps 12 & 13) on a two-day solo trip.
I changed the name of my blog a couple months ago to The Compulsive Hiker and today I’ve taken the next step toward coolness and registered my own domain name: CompulsiveHiker.com. MichaelR42.wordpress.com should continue to work for the blog and RSS feed but the new one is the primary/default.
I started reorganizing my Trail Info pages a couple months ago and got sidetracked by actually doing stuff but intend to get back to that project soon. The goal is to provide more current and timely info than what you might get from a forest/park service web site for example. I will probably get around to expanding the Gear pages too.
Michael R - The Compulsive Hiker
The Compulsive Hiker 