Old River Trail, Buffalo River - July 1-3, 2011

With a little planning ahead, I was able to get my friend, Jeremy, to join me on another backpacking trip at the Buffalo River. We chose this location again due to the fact that it is named a "River" and therefore should have water to drink from. Most places around Northwest Arkansas dry up this time of year and you have to pack in a lot of water.  I'm trying my hardest to keep my pack weight below 30 lbs these days, so that didn't sound very appealing to me, so we chose the Buffalo.

We decided we were going to start the trip from the Horse Camp at Steel Creek again.  We wanted to go further than we did last time, so we decided to leave the other vehicle in Erbie.  Looking at the map, it looked like the quickest and best way to get to the Erbie parking area was to go through Compton and down Compton Road to the parking area.  However, once we got a mile or two down Compton Road, it became evident that we had stumbled upon a 4-wheel drive adventure.  Due to all of the rain that we received in the spring, the steep downhill road had been completely washed out leaving embedded boulders sticking up out of the ground that had to be navigated over and around.  This process took quite a bit of time, but we finally got to the bottom of the hill that the road was leading us down and to the parking area.  Of course, as soon as we had parked my truck and loaded my gear into Jeremy's truck, we turned around to see a well maintained road leading out to the main highway.  Jeremy quickly made up for lost time by rocketing down the road and back over to Steel Creek. 

We hit the trail sometime between 6 and 7 PM and hiked about a mile down the trail to the second river crossing.  On our last trip, we had scoped this area out and deemed it as an excellent place to camp.  We were now taking advantage of our previous reconnaissance and setup camp right next to the river. 

We had already eaten dinner on our drive in, so we had some free time before it got completely dark to do some fishing.  We caught a few small fish here and there and had a good time.  We decided to get a fire started since we had an awesome campsite and a lot of wood available to burn.  We let the fire burn down and headed off to bed.  While laying in our tents, Jeremy started hearing the animals stirring around us -- he apparently isn't too fond of critters.  A few minutes later we heard coyotes start howling in the distance and he was like, "I'm getting my knife...I'm going to sleep with it."  It was very humorous!

The next morning, we got up about 5:30 AM and made a quick breakfast of oatmeal, tore down camp, packed everything up and started down the trail.  We wanted to get a good start before the temperatures got up too high.  We made good time down the trail.  It was amazing to see the difference in plants around/on the trail from our trip back in the spring.  There were some sections of the trail that were almost completely overgrown.  The other huge difference were the horse flies!  They were everywhere and very annoying!

We came up on the Jim Bluff section of the trail and did some more reconnaissance.  It started out as a hunch on how we could skip a river crossing and ended up being a discovery of another very nice future camping location as well as a fishing break. As we were looking around, we found a very deep pool right below Jim Bluff that had some very good size small-mouth bass in it.  Of course, we had to stop and fish the hole -- temperatures or no temperatures!  :)

Jim Bluff Marker

Good Future Campsite

After our fishing break, we hit the trail again and it wasn't very long before we got to Horseshoe Bend again.  It was completely amazing to see the contrast between spring river levels and summer river levels.  The river was more like a creek around the bend this time around (versus the fast current river that we saw in the spring).  A short time later, we came up on Kyle's Landing which is another established campground (costs $10 to camp/night).  We decided to take advantage of the toilets there as well as the running water. 

We took an extended break here while we decided whether or not to setup camp here or go further down the trail.  We decided to head down the trail and see what was down there, and worst case scenario, we could always backtrack and setup camp at Kyle's Landing.  So, we took off down the trail again and found a good fishing/swimming hole pretty quickly, but it didn't really have anywhere to setup a tent, so we had to move on.

About another 1/2 mile down the trail, we found a spur that lead down to the river.  We decided to check it out and found another awesome campsite right next to the river.  The actual campsite was back under the trees, so it was shaded.  The river was low enough that there were some shoals along the river that made an excellent loacation to leave our boots out to dry in the sun (we had gotten a little impatient with the river crossings and just started walking across the river instead of trying to stay dry).

As soon as we decided that this was going to be where we setup camp, our packs came off and we headed straight to the deep pool in the river to go swimming (it was nearly 97 degrees out by this time of day).  We swam for awhile and then got out to go cook and eat lunch.  We were very impressed that we had made such good time and got to the campsite before lunch!  We had some of Mountain House's Dehydrated Beef Stew -- it was very delicious!

Swimming in a Deep Pool

After lunch, we setup our tents and then decided it was time for another swim!  It was a beautiful section of the river -- directly below a 2,000+ foot bluff with some very deep pools to swim in!  The water temperature was very cool once you got in to about 3 foot deep.  There were several large rocks in the river that made good jumping boards as well!

After swimming for awhile, we decided to check out upstream and downstream a little ways to look for good fishing holes.  We found a few spots downstream that looked good for later that night -- closer to dusk.  While we were scouting out the area, we found a baby snapping turtle that proved to be some entertainment for a little while.

We made our way back to our campsite and decided to swim for awhile again, but before we had a chance to do so, a thunderstorm started blowing in and we decided we should probably get our rain flys on the tents before our gear got wet.  We got a little bit of rain, but that was it.  It stayed overcast for the rest of the day (which brought the temperatures down some).  We swam some more during the afternoon, and even took a nap next to the river...until Jeremy's snoring woke both of us up!  :)

After dinner, we went fishing and had some luck -- nothing big, but a lot of fun none-the-less.  We went to bed rather early that evening as we were wore out from the day's activities.  The next morning, we got up and did the normal routine of tearing down camp.  Both of our phones had died (hence the lack of pictures in this part of the post...sorry - we'll do better next time!), so we really didn't know what time we left.  Our best guess was probably around 7:30 or 8:00 AM.

We continued down the trail and quickly made it into the Boy Scout Camp -- Camp Orr.  The trail actually follows one of the roads through the Boy Scout Camp and made for a very quick hike.  After that section, the trail was even less maintained (probably due to decreased traffic).  We kept going and finally made it to our last river crossing.  From here we had to climb up a short bluff and then hike across a field with waist deep grass.  We finally made it back to the truck and discovered that the time was 8:30 AM!  We had to have left closer to 6:30 or 7:00 AM.  It was a good hike and we definitely agreed that our next trip needed to be even longer -- possibly the rest of the trail.