Today is the first
day since summer ended that has been cool enough to get outside and do
some hiking. So, we have decided to go to Magnolia
Falls, a waterfall that I’ve seen lots of beautiful pictures of and have wanted
to see for myself, well... forever. Besides Magnolia Falls there are lots of
other waterfalls along with some other cool stuff to see in this south prong of Boen Gulf.
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cauldron of color below Magnolia Falls
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From the parking area on the west side of the road with room for maybe five cars, we
hike down an old road a little over a quarter mile to a rock cairn marking a
trail left (west), we turn here. This
part of the hike, also on an old road, seems less like a road and more like a
pure trail.
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fall wild flowers
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In about another half mile
we come to a trail intersection and take the left (southwest) trail down a
little creek gully just a short way to Magnolia Falls, which is just beautiful. Although we haven’t seen much rain lately, the
falls still look great and the little grotto below the falls is
truly a magical place.
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above Woods Boys Falls
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From the base of
Magnolia Falls to the top of Woods Boys Fall is only maybe 100 feet and is the kind of place you won’t want to leave. We
hang around soaking in the beauty and taking lots of pictures before heading on around to the base of Woods Boys and Hadlock Cascade.
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Magnolia Falls
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To get from the base of
Magnolia Falls to the base of Woods Boys Falls, again only 100 feet away, isn’t
as easy as that. We hike back up the
little gully a short way to a faint trail heading left (north) along the top of
the bluffs for maybe a quarter mile to a break in the bluffs. It’s a little bit of a climb down, probably
15 or 20 feet then downhill a little further to a small cave at the base of the
bluffline.
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Magnolia Falls
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Staying up along the base of the bluff for
the quarter mile back to Woods Boys Falls is definitely the way to go (more on that in a minute). We soon come to an interesting slab of rock
which somehow came loose from the bluff.
This slab is a natural rock ‘sculpture’ of the infamous Arkansas
Razorback. Yeah, pretty cool and a must
see for sure. |
Razorback Rock
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Now on to Woods Boys,
keeping near the base of the bluffs is the easy way to get there. Don’t go down the steep hillside (like we
did) to the creek. Which is a real
‘bushwhacking boondoggle nightmare'. Once we slip and slide our way down to the creek then turn upstream (east) towards Hadlock
Cascade we have to climb up, through and around lots of large slippery boulders
that fill the drainage below the falls.
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below Magnolia Falls
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This is a big mistake that I wouldn't recommend. Eventually we make it to Hadlock Cascade
which with a little more water would be great. But after the boondoggle to get here, we aren’t very impressed. Our immediate
concern now is: how are we getting out of here?
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Hadlock Cascade
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We’re definitely not going back the way we
came, so it’s up the very steep hillside, up to that bluff that we should have
stayed next to. Any way you look at it, Hadlock Cascade is not an easy waterfall to get to, even if we had stayed near
the bluffline we still would have had to climb down (and back up) that steep
hillside. So, unless there has been a
lot of rain recently, next time I will just skip this one. |
Woods Boys Falls
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And we still haven’t
made it to Woods Boys! From the base of
the bluffline around the corner (southeast) into the little grotto containing
Woods Boys Falls is pretty easy compared to what we’ve just gone through getting
in and out of Hadlock Cascade.
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Hadlock Cascade
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Woods
Boys could also use more water but is still very
nice. On the north side of the falls is
a cool, damp grotto under the bluffs with large flat rocks to sit on and take a
break. You’ll need it if you just came
from the next fall downstream.
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the way out on the old road
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After our visit with
the Woods Boys, we head back along the bluff past 'Rock Hog', then past
the little cave and bluffline break. Not
wanting to climb out where we came down, we continue on the faint trail along
the bluffline further, and in a short distance curve around to the right
(east), at which point the trail re-joins the old road in another 100 yards.
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Woods Boys Falls
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We then head uphill to the top of the bluff
and curve right some more (southeast) and head through the woods back to the
trail intersection for Magnolia Falls. Where we meet some nice folks on their way to Magnolia Falls, they point out some wild oregano growing along the trail, before continuing on to the falls.
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small cave
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We stay straight on the old road and eventually are back to the
car. Most of our hike today was pretty
easy, had we kept to the trails it would have all been easy. Including
our ‘boondoggle’ up the creek, the entire hike was just under 4 miles, with almost 450 feet of
elevation gain. We had a great
time, saw a lot of cool stuff, and we’ll surely come back again. Since we
didn’t get to Stahl Falls a return trip with more water in the creeks is
a must.
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photo worthy Magnolia Falls
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South Boen Gulf: Statistics Chart 27 Getting to the trailhead/parking is pretty easy, on Highway 21 go about 2.5 miles south of Mossville or 1.8 miles north of Edwards Junction, then west on a good dirt road (NC9050) less than half a mile to the parking area on the right with room for 4 or 5 cars. |
| base map before fair use alterations is property of USFS Forest Service-licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 U.S. License |
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