Outdoor Adventures in the Ozarks

     Pine Hollow is another of those not very well known yet great hiking areas, it's located in the Upper Buffalo Wilderness with lots of private property scattered around the area, this makes access into the hollow a little challenging.  I’m sure this accounts for some of the lack of popularity, that along with the meager parking.   North of the Mossville Church on Hwy. 21 is an old road and locked gate on the west side of the highway, this is our parking spot.  There is room here on the old road in front of the gate for probably three cars, and room for more in the grass along the highway. near the top of Pine Hollow      We start our hike south on the old road parallel to the highway, it’s obvious this ‘road’ hasn’t seen anything but foot traffic for a long time and not even much of that, soon the road fizzles out and we come to a fence line.  Across the fence is wooded pasture, we head west along the fence and enter in 100 yards a short forest under a powerline.   I’m sure the

     Another of those places that are pretty well known to rock-climbers but not so much to hikers, the central portion of Cave Creek Bluffs is easy to get to.  S outh of the entrance into Sam’s Throne is an old road on the left, this forest road is not in the best of shape, but it’s under a quarter mile to the ‘prime’ parking area.   It’s a pretty big area with room for maybe ten cars, and a campsite on the south side of the road. distant vista from bluff top     Right at the campsite a good trail heads west, it’s only about 200 yards down this short trail to the top of the bluffs and a nice long bear-crack to the bottom.  While the slope of the bear-crack doesn’t look too bad down close to the bottom, here at the top it is very steep.   It’s all good though, as we aren’t climbing down here anyway, this is where we’ll climb out at the end of our hike later.      The procedure recommended by Danny Hale is to tie a rope here at the top of the bear-crack, toss the other end down, then fi

     Owens Mountain and Ricketts Mountain while popular with rock-climbers are not too well known to most hikers.  Owens and Ricketts are close together separated by Ricketts Knob, and not hard to find.  Just drive to the top of Cowell Road, either from Scenic Highway 7 in Cowell or as we did from Big Creek Road just outside of Mt. Judea. Lizard Rock      The road up the mountain from Big Creek isn’t too bad, but I wouldn’t call it ‘good’ either.  Near the top after a steep ‘S’ curve is an intersection, right (northeast) is Ricketts Mountain Road (FR 1204D) and left (southwest) Cowell Road continues.  Just over a quarter mile further on Cowell Road right after a curve to the left is a wide spot with plenty of room to park two or three vehicles, we park here, although we shouldn’t have. near the top of Owens Mt.      There’s nothing wrong with this parking area, the problem is the overgrown bushwhack up the steep hillside to the base of the bluffs that is completely avoided if we had p