Outdoor Adventures in the Ozarks

     Pine Hollow is another not very well known yet great hiking area, is located in the Upper Buffalo Wilderness with lots of private property around the area, this makes access to 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's room here on the old road in front of the gate for three cars, with more   room  in the grass along the highway. near the top of Pine Hollow      We begin hiking 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, heading west along the fence in 100 yards we cross a short forest under...

     Another place that's pretty well known to rock-climbers but not so much to hikers is Cave Creek Bluffs. This long bluffline can easily be divided up into 4-5 sections, today we're going to the central portion of Cave Creek Bluffs .  S outh of the entrance into Sam’s Throne is an old road on the left, not in the best 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, only about 200 yards down this trail is 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, we aren’t climbing down here, this is where we’ll climb out at the end of our hike later.      Danny Hale  recom...

     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 ...