A New Addition to the Family
Just after a bath!
Hey everyone, meet Duke…the newest member of our household. He’s a Pembroke Welsh Corgi with a LOT of energy! When he gets a little older, he’ll make great company on hikes:
Amazing Destinations: Pinnacle Mountain
Apr 8th 2008dbarnettDestinations & Hiking & Trip Reports
If it’s boulder fields you’re looking for…Arkansas is not necessarily the first place that comes to mind. But I’ve come to find out that Arkansas has many surprises for those looking for some adventure. This past weekend I finally had the chance to summit a mountain that I’ve been eyeing for about a year.
Pinnacle mountain sits just a few minutes from Downtown Little Rock. Its Rocky face can be seen from the interstate. I’ve always been intrigued while driving past it and I wasn’t about to pass up a chance to climb it before I move to Virginia. It sits in the beautiful Ouachita Mountains, which are the only mountain range in the United States that range East to West rather than North to South.
There are basically two ways to the top of this mountain. You can take the relatively easy West face or the strenuos but short East face. We decided to summit the East face and descend the West face taking the base trail back around to the car.
The East face trail starts the ascent the minute you arrive on the trail. After about .2 miles, you leave the trail and it’s boulder scrambling the rest of the way to the top. Scrambling these boulders were a lot of fun and almost make you feel like you’re in the White Mountains instead of the Ouachitas. We followed the bulls-eyes painted on the rock until we finally arrived at the summit.
We hung around the top for about a half hour with a couple of friends of ours, and headed down the West face.
The descent is rather easy because the sandstone has formed stairs that are not too hard to follow. We arrived at the base of the mountain and took the swampy base trail back to the car making the total loop a little over 2.5 miles. It’s not too long of a trail but it’s definitely worthy of the Amazing Destinations list. It’s a refreshing hike that can be done on a time crunch and it offers stunning views at the top and along the way up due to the lack of trees.
Bonus: Stop by Mexico Chiquito on you’re way out of town for some of the world’s best fruit punch and some great burritos and queso dip.
Directions: From Interstate 430, take exit #9 and turn right at the end of the exit. Follow Highway 10 to Pinnacle Valley Dr. and make a right turn. Follow the signs along the road to the East face parking lot. Make sure you bring a camera.
I Guess Good Things Do Come with The Rain
Apr 7th 2008dbarnettPhotography & Random Crap
It’s raining, it’s pouring.
But I wasn’t snoring.
I was wide awake with my camera out.
We’ve been getting hammered with rain lately and I’m actually loving it! All this rain has brought several beautiful double rainbows to the area and I was lucky enough to snap these great photos of the one across the street from my house:
I also stayed outside for hours trying to get some lightning pictures to no avail. Oh well, there’s a lot more storms coming later this week and I’m sure I’ll get a chance to try again.
Stay tuned tomorrow for my weekend trip report (for real)!
Spring Break Part I (And Only)
Apr 4th 2008dbarnettDestinations & Trip Reports
Beep-Beep, Beep-Beep. “Wha..?” “It’s still dark outside.” Those were the first thoughts in my head this particular Friday morning. It was the first day of Spring break and also the first day of my Buffalo River Trail thru-hike. I bounced out of bed, scarfed down some instant oatmeal, grabbed my packed-the-night-before backpack, and headed for the car. I was at Troy’s house by 6:00 and we were soon on our way to the Boxley Valley trailhead.
It was cloudy and chilly this morning and we knew the forecast for the rest of the weekend was anything but pleasant, but we weren’t gonna let anything stop us from an amazing 4 day trip in the Ozark Mountains. We were treated instantly to a cold, wet creek crossing before we started our climb. Up, up, up, and further up we went.
When we got to the top, we were treated to a beautiful bald on top of the ridge. We stayed above the treeline for quite a while with beautiful views all around. For a mile or so, it felt like we were no longer in Arkansas, but the Appalachians. Then, all too quickly, we headed back into the cover of trees which we would stay under for the rest of the day.
We were treated to some beautiful waterfalls along the way and even had a couple of wet crossings to soak our sore, tired feet in. We stopped for lunch about noon and Troy found that he had a pretty good size blister on his heel. That was pretty shocking to develop that thing on day one. It busted open and I convinced him to pour some germ-x in it to clean it out before slapping on a moleskin. It was pretty funny to hear a grown man scream like that! Little did I know, his blister continued to hurt him the rest of the day and progressively got worse.
After several unrewarding ups and downs we started our last big push before we made camp. We pressed on for a while with very few rewarding views or anythng interesting to see at all. This was a long 3 miles that was uphill the entire time. Then, we finally arrived at Big Hollow, our camp for the night. We set up camp and then at the staple of backpackers all across America…ramen noodles.
Exhausted from our big day of hiking, we went to bed as soon as it got dark expecting a great night’s sleep…
We got anything but that…about 1:00 am the storms started rolling in. They had been predicting severe storms all along with torrential downpours. We could see lightning striking all around and we were on the highest point on this section of the trail. We decided, wisely, to head to lower ground so we donned our headlamps and raingear and headed down the trail 1 mile to Ponca. I’m pretty sure we were almost struck by lightning twice. We took shelter under the Highway 74 bridge and the storms did not even slow down until 4 am. We stayed at Ponca until daylight and headed back to our camp.
My buddy Troy’s blister continued to get worse and worse. To complicate things, he had been walking funny with heavy weight on his back which caused him to injure his ankle so that he could almost not walk. We decided to pack up our gear, hike down to Ponca, and go home early, defeated, to prevent further injury.
So, there ya have it…Spring break was cut short, though we did manage to fit in a canoe trip from Ponca to Kyle’s the following Monday. It wasn’t everything I dreamed, and I felt pretty lousy about quitting, but I still had an enjoyable time.
Lesson learned: If you buy a new insert for your shoes, give them time to break in just like you would new shoes.
Have a good weekend everyone!
Happy Energy Wasting Day!
Apr 1st 2008dbarnettRandom Crap
April First is Energy Wasting Day! Check it out:
Energy Wasting Day- 1st April 2008
For more information, visit: http://www.energywastingday.com
