Hike and Bike

On my first trip on the Ozark trail, last summer, I hiked the first 7 and a half miles of the northern-most section of the trail, the Courtois section. I had planned to finish it at spring break but I got sick. So I set out to do it this past weekend.

Two weeks ago I wrote about the storms that had knocked down so many trees in the Paddy Creek wilderness. I turns out that that storm caused widespread damage in south-central Missouri. Many sections of the Ozark trail have had to be closed (many of which I have hiked in the past year) until sawyers can come and clear the dead trees. Fortunately the Courtois section was largely spared, at least the northern portion. So I decided to start about 12 miles into the section (from the southern end) and hike up to the point I had reached last year.

One of the challenges faced by backpackers is transportation. Most trails are "point-to-point" and so you end up a long way from where you parked your car. Rather than using a shuttle service this time I hit on the idea of using my bike. The Courtois section, as you can see below, makes a wide bend and touches (or nearly touches) highway 8 in two places. So I put my bike in the trunk of my car and hid it in the woods near the northern end of the trail and then drove to my starting point. The idea was to hike to the bike (following the blue path on the map below) and then bike to the car (the red path, which follows highway 8). It worked out reasonably well (except for a rainstorm during the biking part of my trip).

View Middle Courtois Section Hike in a larger map

As near as I can figure the total distance on the trail was 23.7 miles and the biking distance was 8 miles.

Even after having done quite a few backpacking trips over the past year or two I am still a very imperfect backpacker. The one thing I do well is hike. Once I start hiking I become quite taken with the beauty of the forest and it just seems wrong to stop hiking (until it gets too dark to find my way). So I end up doing quite a few miles in a day. This time I started at 1pm or so and did about 19 miles before I stopped to camp. I ended up hiking all the way to my bike on the first day. Part of that is because I hike alone. Hiking alone is really great. But sitting around in camp alone is not much fun. So I tend not to do it much.

Every time I go hiking I think "This one, THIS is the most beautiful section I've ever hiked". It can't really be the case that every trail is more beautiful than the last so I think my memory just fades quickly. But I was very taken with the beauty of this section. Unfortunately most of my pictures didn't turn out (something on the lens I think) but here is a taste of what it was like.


I made a few mistakes, like I do every time. I brought a stove and a hot meal to cook as well as dried snacks to eat along the way. But I never ended up using the stove or the hot meal. It all goes back to preferring to hike rather than sit in camp. And the right kind of snacks can be tasty as well as nutritious. I really like crunchies freeze dried mixed fruit. No sugar, additives, or preservatives and it's light as a feather and tastes great. I've bought similar stuff from Just Tomatoes. Their freeze dried mixed veggies is awesome trail food. I also eat a lot of jerky along the trail so I get a pretty balanced diet. And for pure calories (it takes a surprising amount of calories to hike) peanut M&Ms are hard to beat.

My biggest weakness as a backpacker is sleeping. Often I don't sleep at all. Other times I sleep fitfully. If I hike until I'm exhausted I have better luck but still my body needs to have familiar surroundings. So this time I left the hammock at home and tried the air mattress and bug bivy. It's heavier in the summer than a hammock but it feels more like a bed. My mistake was to look up at the clear night sky and decide that no rain protection was necessary. In the middle of the night I felt drops on my face and quickly threw the poncho/tarp over the bivy. That kept me dry but because it wasn't staked out or supported with trees or poles there was little circulation so I felt pretty clammy when I woke up. Oh well, live and learn.

Next morning I hiked a bit farther up the trail to meet the point I had got to last year and then I went back to camp, got on the bike and headed to my car. That's when the rain really came down. So by the time I arrived at the highway 8 trailhead I was drenched. Then the rain promptly stopped. I hid the bike in the trees, hiked about a mile and half up to my car and drove back to get the bike and go home.

All in all it was a great hike.

Paddy Creek After a Storm

Well the finals are all graded and the grades submitted so I took the opportunity to get away for some hiking. I was originally planning to go Thursday night and come back Friday but something came up and I had to reschedule. It turns out to be fortunate that I did because a very severe storm hit on Thursday night. More on that later.


View Paddy Creek Wilderness (short loop) in a larger map

The map above shows the loop I took. I wanted to do a longer loop but somehow I got on a shortcut trail that makes a shorter loop. I'm going to start a support group for knuckleheads like me who own GPS units and don't have the brains to use them. I had forgotten to load this section of Topo map onto my unit and didn't realize it until it was too late. Hence the mistake.

The Paddy Creek Wilderness is located in Central Missouri, essentially directly southwest of my house. It's farther West than I have gone before. The area differs from the parts of the Ozarks I have explored before in that the rock formations appear to be limestone and not igneous rocks. The Paddy Creek Wilderness is near the Big Piney river which runs through central Missouri and empties into the Gasconade (which in turn empties into the Missouri). The Paddy Creek Wilderness area is the area surrounding the little Paddy Creek (which joins the big Paddy Creek before it empties into the Big Piney). The area is quite beautiful with many limestone cliffs overlooking the creek.




Since it's late spring there's beginning to be more wildlife around although the mosquitoes aren't yet as bad as they will be. This is the first time I've got a decent picture of one of these guys.

He thought I didn't see him and so stayed real still for the photo. I'm not exactly sure but I think this is a Five-lined Skink, also called a "Blue-tailed skink" (note the blue tail). This is Missouri's most common skink.

Being from the desert I'm used to lizards. But I thought that was the only slice of desert I'd find in Missouri. Imagine my surprise when I almost stepped on this right next to the trail! Am I right that this is a prickly pear cactus? Weird.


I arrived in the late afternoon on Friday and it had rained all night. The trail was soaked and all the little tributaries that dump into the little Paddy were full. Here the trail crosses one of these tributaries. It made a nice picture I thought.


But the main story of this trip was the storm damage. It was truly unbelievable. Hundreds of huge trees had been ripped up by the roots. I think I spent half my time off the trail, bushwhacking, trying to find a way around fallen trees. I genuinely think that if I had gone on Thursday I might not be alive today. My hammock could have been tied to one of those trees. Or worse, one could have fallen on me in my sleep (if anyone could have slept during that storm).

Most of the fallen trees were oaks. But many tall pines fell as well and this surprised me. I would have thought that those straight, tall pines provide less of a target for the wind and so wouldn't be as prone to fall over in a storm. But as you can see that wasn't the case.

In the picture above it's a bit hard to get the scale. I'm standing on the trunk and taking the picture. The trunk is larger around than my body and looked to me to be at least 40 feet tall, maybe 50.

This next picture is a bit hard to understand unless you were there. A row of three huge pines fell like dominoes. Note how you can see the rootball of the second tree under the trunk of the first. The third is farther along.


I went super-ultralight on this trip. My lightest hammock, just my poncho for a tarp and raingear, and no stove (just ate cold food). Worked out fine. I'll push this even farther when the weather warms up even more so I can do some serious miles.

Stegall Mountain after Burning

Those of you who read my blog know that I'm a fan of Allison Vaughn's blog, Ozark Highlands of Missouri. There's a lot to learn about Missouri ecosystems on her blog. But she also talks a lot about how much she enjoys burning forests. That's her job. Sounds like a funny job for a conservationist but it turns out that occasional, limited burning is one of the best tools for keeping a forest healthy.

At least that's what Allison says. I had no first hand knowledge until Easter weekend when I got to hike through some of her handiwork.

My Father came from New Mexico to go hiking with me and see the Ozarks first-hand. I decided I wanted to take him to the area that I had heard was one the most beautiful areas of the Ozarks, the Current River section of the Ozark Trail between Stegall Mountain and Rocky Falls. Below I have embedded a Google map of the path we took with a few notes about the hike. You can zoom in to see the terrain better and look at the annotations I have made at various points. The trail was about 5 miles each way with some significant ups and downs.


View Stegall Mountain Trip in a larger map

Stegall Mountain is in the southeast part of Missouri. It's not the highest peak in the Ozarks but it's bald on top so it provides some great views of the surrounding area. I had heard shortly before the trip that there had been a burn in the area some weeks before. I was both a little concerned and a little curious to see what it would be like to hike and camp so shortly after a fire. What I found delighted me and made me grateful for people like Allison who spend their time to make our forests healthy.

The forest near Stegall, like all forest in the Ozarks, is primarily Oak and Hickory with some Pine. There seem to be more pines than where I have hiked before. The pines are truly amazing. We hiked through stands of pine where each tree was at least 40 feet high and straight as an arrow. I can imagine that the early settlers must have been really excited to see such stands of perfect timber. In fact I think the area was over-logged back then. The fire cleared away all the brush down low but didn't really hurt the trees. Here's Hyrum next to one of those pines. You can see a little charring on the bark but the tree appeared completely unharmed. But notice behind Hyrum how open and free of brush the forest was.

As we ascended Stegall the terrain turned very rocky. I had expected to see mostly Dolomite (which is very common in southern Missouri) but it appears that the "bones" of Stegall are Rhyolite just like the St Francios mountains like Bell and Taum Sauk. This rocky climb was quite steep and at the top the trees ended and we could turn around and see this view of the area we had just hiked through and quite a ways south. Notice that low down on all the trees you can see the a little bit of charring from the fire but that the trees are all healthy.

There were places where we could see that on one side of the trail there had been burning but not on the other side. The burned side was open and inviting. The unburned side was choked with brush. Obviously this is nice from a aesthetic perspective but Allison tells me that there is something more important going on. The types of bushes and small trees that can't handle fire tend to be the invasive species while the survivors are native species. So the fire preserves the natural beauty of the Ozarks.

There seems to be an unusual concentration of Hickory in the area. The forest floor was covered with Hickory nuts: hundreds and thousands of them everywhere. The kids collected some of these nuts and later we cracked them found that Hickory nuts taste great. The smell of Hickory was in the air everywhere (a heavenly smell if you aren't familiar with it). The smell permeated all my gear and clothes and now, a week later I can pick up my coat and smell it and the whole experience comes rushing back to me.

Our destination was Rocky Falls. A small river named Rocky Creek falls over a massive rock formation in a very picturesque way. Here's the falls...

...and here's my dad posing with his grandkids in front of the falls.

The pool at the base of the falls looks like it would make a great swimming hole in summer!

We set up our hammocks near the falls so that we could go to sleep listening to the sound of the rushing water. The next morning we took a short hike to the top of the falls.

We wanted to hike down the other side so I took off my shoes and socks and ferried the kids across while wading. My dad went upstream and found a fallen log to cross over.

The first day had been misty and windy and we were quite cold (I wished I had brought gloves). But Saturday the weather turned very warm and the kids found the hike out a lot more challenging. Then we rushed home in time for the kids to have an Easter egg hunt with some friends.

Hammock Bunk Beds

It's been a while since I have blogged. The reason is because I haven't been able to backpack recently. I had a big trip planned for the second week of March that ended up not happening. It was Spring Break at the University but not at my kids' schools. So I decided to try a 3-day trip on one of the longer sections of the Ozark Trail. I bought my food, packed up my gear, printed my maps, and had it all ready to go the night before. The next morning I woke up with a stomach virus including vomiting, fever, body aches, the works. So no backpacking trip.

Since then my teaching load at the University has increased and so there hasn't really been time to get away.

I have a new piece of gear I've been wanting to try but so far have only tried in the back yard. It's an 11x10 Cat Tarp from Jacks R Better. The Cat stands for catenary, meaning that the sides are cut as catenary curves rather than lines. This means that the tarp flaps less in the wind. The large size means that there is enough excess room that you can fold the edges of the tarp in to create doors as I did below.

This provides extra protection from wind and rain. Notice that I have also pulled out the sides to make it look even more tent-like. There is one tie-out on the side of the tarp in the middle but I created a second one using Grip Clips. You can see what I did more easily from the side.



I could have put doors on both sides but that begins to defeat the purpose of a tarp which is to provide maximum ventilation (to prevent condensation). Also there was really no room in this case because I set the tarp up along the short axis to make it as tall as possible. The reason was that Debbie and I were going to test the tarp out together in two hammocks, bunk bed style!

Here was the setup. I put the bridge hammock on the bottom and a simple gathered-end hammock on top.

And here's our lovely model demonstrating!


The weather was a bit cold, about 40 degrees with wind, so we each used a closed-cell foam pad under us. I followed the advice of a friend on hammmockforums.net who suggested putting the end with the doors into the wind. That way the tarp splits the wind rather than providing a big target for the wind to push against as it would be if you faced the broad side of the tarp into the wind. The open end faces away from the wind. Stopping the wind this way is critical when using a hammock because the wind will carry the warm air under you away and you will feel chilled.

This setup worked wonderfully. Debbie and I were amazed at how comfortable we were and we went right to sleep. It's nice to have your spouse close to you when you are camping! It make it feel so much more natural to go to sleep, even in the outdoors.

Interests Relating to Backpacking

I've found that backpacking has sparked my interest in several areas that I hadn't really thought about much before. I'm finding myself googling things more often to learn the answers to questions that come up during a hike. Backpacking puts you more in touch with the natural world that we usually don't see or think about.

Forestry

Trees are the first thing you begin to wonder about in the forest. You feel stupid not knowing what these trees around you are. After I'd been on a few hikes I began to wonder what kind of trees I was seeing and what were the nuts I kept finding on the ground so I began asking questions. Now I can recognize a Hickory nut and I know which tree it comes from. I never knew what Hickory trees were before. Now I'm wondering if it's Hickory trees that give the Ozarks their particular smell. The smell is subtle but quite nice. The other day I took out one of my tarps and had the family smell it compared with the smell of a brand new tarp that I'd never used. "That's the smell of the Ozarks" I told them. However I don't know yet that it is Hickory that I'm smelling.

I always knew what an Oak tree was but after reading Allison Vaughn's recent blog entry I'm anxious to get back and see if I can tell which of the oaks I'm seeing are post oaks and which are the red or black oaks. Apparently the post oak is adapted to the fires that once were common in the forest. Now that we stop forest fires the red and black oaks (that can't tolerate fire) are taking over.

Astronomy/Star Gazing

Last Thursday night on top of Taum Sauk Hyrum and I were struck with the perfect view we had of the stars. We were on top of the highest mountain in the state, far from any major town, with no leaves on the trees and no clouds in the sky. As I looked around I found that I wished I knew more about the stars I was seeing. I could recognize Orion's belt but that's about all. Here's a picture I stole from the web somewhere. You can see the stars that make the belt. I figured the two bright stars underneath must be his feet and the two upper ones were his hands. A very rough approximation of a person I thought. I started reading about the constellations and found that Orion is the big winter constellation. After spring it falls below the horizon. I also learned that there is more detail in the constellation than I originally thought.

You see that bright area just below the belt? That is often called the sword. Now look to the right of the upper stars. There are 4 smaller stars in a semi-circle. That is the bow that Orion is shooting.

The stars in Orion are among the brightest in the sky. Including Rigel (bottom right) and Betelgeuse (top left). The sword is actually not a star, it's the Orion Nebula.

Pretty cool. I'll have to study up to see what other constellations there are to see and how they change with the seasons.

Entomology

We all see bugs from time to time but we mostly step on them, shoo them away, or ignore them. In the woods I see some pretty cool bugs sometimes. This fall while on Bell Mountain I stopped to cook lunch and when I finished and turned around to get my pack I met this fellow.
It's hard to get the scale from the picture but he was about 5 inches long. Learning names of insects is much harder than birds or animals because there are so many. But the variety itself is pretty incredible. I never really cared before but while hiking I have time to look at these things and now I'm wishing I knew more about them.

Geology

All kids are interested in rocks as a rule. Very few adults are. But once again the fact that you have more time while backpacking makes all the difference. Here's me picking up a rock while hiking with my brother near Council Bluff lake. You can't see the rock very well. It looked almost like a geode to me but not quite. These things were everywhere.

This winter I returned to this same general area to hike the Middle Fork section. The northern end of that trail is near Council Bluff. Here's a larger stone of the same kind. I just had to stop and look at it and take this picture. What in the world is going on here? It's softer than a geode. It seems to be made of sand but why these bumps instead of flat layers like most sedimentary rocks?


Hmmm. Still got a lot to learn.

Mina Sauk Falls

With Saturday being Valentine's day I knew I couldn't do a weekend backpacking trip. But Hyrum had Friday off from school and I didn't have a class to teach or a seminar to attend so we headed off to spend Thursday night on a mountain.

Missouri is not the land of high mountains. In fact you can drive right to the top of Taum Sauk mountain, the highest mountain in Missouri, and look at this plaque. There is a campground near this spot where we spent the night.

Here is Hyrum enjoying a brief moment as the highest person in Missouri. (Actually he was the highest person in a several state region since there is nothing higher in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, or Ohio.)

In a previous post I described hiking the trail that leads to the top from the Ketcherside trailhead. During that trip we hiked down to Mina Sauk falls, the highest waterfall in Missouri (132 foot drop in total) but I forgot my camera back at camp and so got no pictures. It didn't matter much because on that occasion there was no water. The falls only run after wet weather. We got quite a bit of rain on Wednesday so I thought we might get a nice view on Friday morning. We weren't disappointed.

The side of Taum Sauk where the falls are located (a little over a mile hike from the peak) is very rocky. The creek cascades down a rocky cliff but not in a straight line so there is no way to get a view of the entire falls without a helicopter. No picture from the ground really does them justice. Here is a shot from quite a ways back. But you can really only see the middle part very well. At the top of the picture you can catch a glimpse of the uppermost part of the fall.

Standing at the top this is the view you have looking down.

There are two trails from the peak to the falls and we took one going down and another coming back. The entire loop is just under 3 miles.

All in all we had a great time. Hyrum is a natural camper. Once his head hits that hammock he is asleep and doesn't stir til morning. Even with a comfortable hammmock and a quiet night (like we have in the winter) it's not that easy for me. I have to lie for quite a while before I can convince my body that it's okay to fall asleep even if I'm not in my bed at home. One of the difficulties of age I guess.

Tent Stakes

The weather lately has been very interesting. Just a few days ago the highs were in the teens. Today it was near 70 degrees. There's Missouri for you. The nice weather makes me anxious to get out on the trail but there's still a lot of snow on the trails (now a lot of slush) which makes for unpleasant hiking. So instead of reporting on a trip I'm going to talk about gear again.

I mentioned in a previous post that I was having trouble with my Tite-Lite stakes. In general I like these stakes a lot. They are very lightweight and work great for pot supports for cooking (as I described in this post). The problem is in the winter when the ground is frozen. I've bent a stake trying to get it into the ground.

I've also lost a stake when the wind caught my tarp and ripped the stake out of the ground, sending the stake flying to who knows where. So I purchased some 8" Easton Aluminum stakes. These stakes are surprisingly light and strong. You can pound on them without worrying about them bending. Also, rather than a shepherd's hook at the end they have a cord which you can tie to your guy lines. That means that even if the wind rips the stake out of the ground it will stay attached to your tarp and not get lost.


I set up my tarp in the back yard and slept under it during the snowfall last week. Pounding the stakes into the frozen ground worked great. I was very impressed. Unfortunately it's much harder to get them out. I suppose it's a testament to their staying power but when I tried to remove them I had to really pull and this was all I got. Actually I had 4 to begin with and it only happened on half the stakes so it wasn't a total loss.

One of the good things about buying gear at REI is their return policy. You can return anything at any time in any shape. Sometimes this gets abused I'm afraid, leading people to joke about REI standing for Return Everything Immediately. In this case I felt justified since my stakes had failed on the first use.

So instead I got some MSR Ground Hogs. These aluminum stakes aren't as light or as long as the Easton stakes but they are all one piece so they can't come apart. And they still have the cord attachment rather than the shepherd's crook. I've talked to people who use them and they all say they are really strong and can take a beating. I won't often need that kind of toughness since the ground isn't often frozen in these parts. But I do need it occasionally.


Actually the best thing to do is often to use no stakes at all. If you can find trees or bushes to tie your guy lines to then that is stronger than any stake. I really try hard to pick a spot where I have things to tie to. Sometimes if there isn't a tree in the right place you can find a heavy fallen tree limb and drag it to the spot. Backpackers who often camp in deep snow really like this method because you can't find any ground to pound into. There are stakes that are designed for holding in snow but I have no experience with them.

There's another trick that I have used when I'm concerned about my stakes not holding. The worst wind I ever camped in was early last spring with Kimberly. We hung our hammocks right next to each other so we could talk. Good thing too since we didn't get a wink of sleep. The wind was gusting to 45 mph and the sound that a tarp makes in that kind of wind would wake the dead. The campground was very sandy and so I was concerned the stakes wouldn't stay. Fortunately there were large rocks around. I pushed the stakes into the ground and rolled a large rock on top of each. The wind didn't yank the stakes out of the ground all that night although it tried pretty hard.