Trip Report
Ozark Trail
Highway N to Highway DD
When I was in the beginning stages of a 2 night backpacking trip I said to my self…”Self, to hell with the heat, lets hike when it’s nice and cool out! The 3rd weekend in Oct should do it. Lots of color in the trees, beds of soft leaves to sleep on, brisk days for hiking…perfect!” Oh if only it was that perfect.
Starting out on Saturday Morning we caught the shuttle from the DD parking lot to the temporary Hwy A drop off. It was a nice cool morning, but the forecast was calling for highs in the 80’s. Yuk… I had also intentionally weighted down my pack some, starting weight was 39.2 lbs before water. Mojo (my dog!) started out with about 6 lbs. I figured if mine got too heavy, I’d just swap packs with him…
At about 9am on Saturday we finally hit the trail. The climb up Goggins Mountain was a hell of a wake up call for legs that hadn’t packed since May. It always amazes me how quickly you start to feel it out there, and then, just as quickly, you fall into the rhythm of just putting one foot in front of the other.
After a few miles, we were rewarded by our first glade. It was a about lunch time (and I was ready for a break!) so we located a nice rock to eat (nap!) on. We also took some time to marvel in the views of this glade, as well as explore it some. It was somewhere about here that I noticed most of the trees were still green. Leaves were turning and falling, but not at the rate that they should be. As I thought about this for awhile, the reason stuck me, “Damn, we are standing in the sun and its 80 degrees out here!” I don’t think I stopped sweating the rest of the trip…
After a 7 mile hike over Goggins Mountain, we found a very nice spot down by Padfield branch. It was in between the branch and a small spring branch. Preloaded with wood and a fire ring! Yays! It was pretty early (3:00) when we made it to camp, but I was already rippin tired. Maybe the lack of sleep that week finally caught up to me. I rolled out the Thermarest and caught a nice nap right there. After the nap, we had some time to filter water, take a nice bath, cook dinner, and pretty much go back to sleep. Pretty sure it was 7:30 or 8 when I crawled in the tent.
The next morning, I woke up in a pool of sweat (told you I never stopped). It only got down to 60 both nights, just not cold enough for a sound night sleep out in the woods. We broke camp late (10:00) and proceeded to hike over Bell Mountain. More glades, more sun, more heat, at least the wind was blowing! We managed to make it to Ottery Creek about 1:00 for a break and some lunch. I think I ate too much… Or filtered too much water… because the climb up the hill from Ottery was hell. I swear I was dragging 3 sleds and a drunken elephant (I don’t know where he came from) up that god forsaken hill.
Now we had planned on making it to Peter cave hollow then trying to find a spot to camp. There wasn’t much there (it was pretty grown up) and since it was only like 2:30, we pushed on for the next spot. This was apparently a funny joke on us. 4 miles later we found a pseudo abandoned road just before panther branch and just dropped our stuff right there. Looks like a camp site to me! We did meet some nice mountain bikers along the way though, as well as some very nice equestrians (the horses didn’t really like us, which was odd, because the mountain bikes were calm as could be…). They gave us a couple bottles of water (we made Mojo carry them) though, which really came in handy since we didn’t camp on the water. I did hike down to panther branch and fill up Sunday night, but it was nice to have some extra water volume available.
Ya know, there is just something about a long days hike, followed by a damn good meal. I had even brought a dessert I found in a backpackers cookbook .We pretty much just ate ourselves silly and passed out. It was too hot that night as well, but I think I was just too tired and too full to care.
The hike out the next day was indeed short. We broke camp early, and then hiked down to Panther branch to eat some breakfast and filter a tad of water. We then began the hike back to our car. We were done by 11:00am, plenty of time to make it to Potosi for some burgers!
Overall it was a good trip. The area was amazing in its rugged beauty, but really gave us a challenge with all the loose rock, as well as the heat. The new shuttle service and trip planner made it almost too easy to plan the trip. All we had to do was drive down there by 7:45 in the morning. No shuttling cars, no manually figuring out distances between points, great stuff.
Till next time!
Chris
