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.
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near the top of Pine Hollow
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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 utility
company will be bringing in the brush-hog soon as these thick saplings are
getting pretty tall.
After crossing
under the powerline, we’re back on the old road for a short time, then come to a
couple seemingly out-of-place fence posts with a wood rail between. We call this the ‘hitching post’ since
there’s no sign of a fence anywhere. Continuing west we pick our way through the woods trying to avoid the
thick patches of greenbrier and other forms of ‘jungle’ occasionally we’ll use
the old roads that seem to be following us.
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small falls on the south fork of Pine Hollow
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About 200 yards further is a survey peg driven in the ground, it’s not easy to spot even with the aid of GPS, and not important if you don’t, we sort of stumbled on it. Much more obvious is the hill going down to the southwest, up until now we have been hiking through mostly flat forest.
As we head downhill to the southwest, the first thing we notice is the
forest is much cleaner with hardly any undergrowth, the slope downward is
gentle to, for a bushwhack this is about as good as it gets.
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dripping wet bluffs
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About a tenth of a mile down the hill
that all changes when the slope gets steep with some large rocks, we head
diagonally downhill due south to a little creek and find a spot where we can
cross. You could call this creek the
‘South Fork Pine Hollow’ and although we’re near the top of the hollow there is water flowing in the creek.
Along the creek, the undergrowth has thickened up once
again. Even so this is a real pretty
area with nice cascades, a small three-foot
waterfall, soon we're at the top of Pine Hollow Falls and the
bluffline. |
dead-end on a ledge
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Following the top of the
bluff west mostly on firm bedrock but with lots of thick brush mixed in it’s
pretty slow going, about 200 feet to a questionable bluffline break with lots
of water spread out over the bedrock on top and falling off the bluffs. We climb about halfway down this ‘break’ in
the bluff before it becomes impassable, but from which we have a nice view of
maybe ten separate little waterfalls spread out about 50 feet along the bluff. These falls are most definitely ‘wet weather falls’ as they originate in a very
tiny drainage. After snapping a few pictures, we climb back to the top continuing west and in another 200 yards come
to a real bluffline break. This one gets
us to the bottom safely, although it is steep and slippery.
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one of many wet weather waterfalls
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Now at the base of the bluffline we make our way back east over lots of
loose, slick broken rock soon passing a long shelter cave. It isn’t very tall or deep,
so we pass on by
and come to all those little waterfalls we had seen from above. And just beyond the falls is what’s referred
to as ‘The Moon Slot’. I don’t know where this name comes from or the
significance, to me it just looks like a small landslide area with lots of big
sharp jagged rocks, at any rate it sure is pretty. |
undercut bluff approaching Moon Slot
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A
hundred yards from the Moon Slot we arrive at the base of Pine Hollow
Falls. This twenty-foot fall looks great today after the recent rains, we spend some time here in the head
of the canyon. Below the falls Pine
Hollow ‘falls’ away steeply and is jammed with gigantic boulders all
around. Below is Lower Pine Hollow
Falls only about 100 yards downstream, but the hollow is so
steep and rugged we'll skip it, instead we look for what Danny Hale describes as ‘Spherical
Rocks’.
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Spherical Rock and socket
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These are on some of the gigantic boulders in and
near the creek, they are iron ore deposits like we have seen before. Most of them are round about the size of a basketball, a few are smaller tennis ball size. There are also a few round impressions in the boulders where the spherical rock has fallen out leaving a ‘socket’ in the rock. This area north of the creek at the base of the bluffline with the huge spherical rock encrusted boulders is a pretty spot for a short lunch break, before we retrace our route back to the car. |
Moon Slot
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While sitting here on some big rocks munching our sandwiches and admiring
the bluffs,
I notice a narrow and quite steep bluffline break right in front of
us. Consulting the GPS,
I can see this
bluffline break would be a big short-cut and would turn the ‘in and out’ hike
into a nice loop instead. We study the
break a little and decide on the best route to the top, steep yes, but not very
far only about 25 feet up. We scramble
to the top where we find someone has built a rock cairn to mark the spot.
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Pine Hollow Falls
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While
Kat sits in the dry grass to re-tie her shoes,
I check the GPS and see that we
are only about 100 feet north of where we came down the hillside earlier. After the gentle climb up the hill through
the woods to the survey-peg we retrace our steps as best we can (it is a
bushwhack) back to the car, almost there, in the short forest Kat realizes her
phone is missing, oh no. Although we
rarely have a cell signal while hiking,
we both carry our phones, I use mine as
a GPS and Kat's is our camera.  |
spherical socket
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We go back looking for the phone, but since there's no trail, we soon realize it’s like searching for a needle in a haystack, we abandon the search and head to the car, thankfully it was a cheap phone. On
the drive home we talk about it, “How could you have lost your phone?” I ask,
but she doesn’t want to talk about it.
After all phones don’t just fall out of your pocket (yeah right), and
she is sure she didn’t leave it laying on a rock somewhere.
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rugged and scenic
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“The last place I took it out was for some pictures of the round rocks.” she says. Well,
that’s where it must be I decide. Then I announce,
“We’ll go back tomorrow and find it.” She just rolls her eyes. Tomorrow is Saturday,
we head out early right after breakfast, and
make a beeline
for the steep little bluffline break hoping to find the phone
at the bottom of the bluff near where we ate our sandwiches. To our surprise here it is, next to the rock
cairn where she had tied her shoes, cool and it still works.
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spherical rock
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Pine Hollow is a great little hike, even if it is completely a
bushwhack, and there is a lot more to see including nearby Little Pine Hollow,
so we know we’ll be back. This hike (not
including Saturday’s phone finding mission) packed a punch for such a short
hike of right around 2 miles and 250 feet total elevation gain.
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at Pine Hollow Falls
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Pine Hollow: Statistics Chart 73 Between Mossville and Boxley it's easy enough to find, just drive north from the Mossville Baptist Church about 0.6 miles on Highway 21 to a gate and small parking area on the west side of the highway, or if coming from Boxley, drive south from the entrance at the South Boxley Trailhead about 4 miles to the parking area on the right. |
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