We haven’t seen much rain in the last week, and winter hasn’t shown
itself, not yet anyway. I thought it would be a good time to see Victor
Indian Shelter which is north of the old town of Victor on North
Fork Illinois Bayou. To get there we’re going to try Sulphur Road just outside of Sand Gap, it’s a big short-cut compared to the long drive down Highway 7 to Victor Road. Sulphur Road is in surprisingly good shape; in a remote area of the Ozark National Forest, we don’t see any houses on this road.
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Sulpher Road
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The only obstacle encountered is a big tree in the road which we have to drive around through the ditch as it's too
heavy to move. The road does get a bit
steep as we come down off the mountain into the North Fork valley. At the ford across
North Fork Illinois Bayou,
we stop and park. The river is really moving, with little white caps making it hard to judge the depth, I decide this is as far as we’re going, if I
can’t see the bottom I don’t usually drive across. |
North Fork ford
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With a lot more water than I had expected we’ll just have
to hike up to the shelter from this the west side of the river, no big deal it
just means our hike will be mostly ‘off trail’.
Our plan was to cross the river here, park just to the north on an old road
then hike up to the shelter on the trail created by the Cowboy Up Trails
Club. So,
we’ll be bushwhacking instead,
at least we won’t be crossing the river. |
below Mill Hole Falls
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We head north with the North Fork to our right and a long rock wall
on our left, there is a bit of undergrowth but overall,
not too bad. In about 100
yards we’re at Mill Hole a beautiful spot on the North Fork, this gorgeous swimming hole has a nice little cascade style waterfall spilling in. Here on the west bank is lots of undergrowth
but across the river on the east side we see a very nice clean beach with
huge flat slabs of bedrock at the edge of Mill Hole, it looks like a great place to go swimming. |
The Mill Hole
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Continuing upstream the terrain gets rougher
with lots of big rock and deadwood debris near the river, we are forced into the
woods maybe 50 feet from the water’s edge.
Passing more rock walls and an old homesite with nothing remaining
other than the stone foundation, we soon cross a small feeder stream coming down
from the west. North of the stream a bluffline curls around from west to north and follows North Fork close
to the river’s edge. Now we're hiking on
ledges between the water and bluff it’s pretty easy going with very little
vegetation on this slab of bedrock. It
does get a little narrow in a few spots and we do have to climb a little from
one ledge to another but overall, it’s easy and fun.
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bear-crack down to cave
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Soon we’re at a curve where North Fork
flowing out of the east turns to the south, and a lovely little stream is
flowing in from the north. The stream is
only about 10 feet across on solid bedrock, we slip-on our waders and cross
easily, on the other side we spot a little sign nailed to a tree that says,
‘steep trail’. Well,
you’ll get no
complaints from us, at least there is
a trail, yes it's steep, but not too bad mostly north with a couple switchbacks then east up
a steep little side canyon.
South up some more and finally down onto a
big rock patio with fantastic views of the North Fork. Between us and the river are a couple big pedestal rocks far
below, on the west side of the rock patio is a short bear-crack down to Victor Indian Shelter. The shelter isn’t big but is interesting, there's one small room with a window
facing west and a balcony outside. Leaving the shelter, we head west down onto a ledge that follows around to the north below the balcony above.
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North Fork Illinois Bayou
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We find a couple even smaller shelters along this route back to the trail where we turn southwest back down the steep hill to the river.
After crossing the little stream it’s south on the ledges along the
river, we stay in the woods about 100 feet from the river hoping for an easier
return trip. Still pretty overgrown
though, about 100 yards from the road we spot a memorial someone has
built honoring two lost loved ones, it’s amazing the things you find in the
middle of nowhere.
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downstream on the Illinois Bayou (Apr. 2019)
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Back at the
truck parked just off Sulphur Road on a forest
road, we decide to hike down the old road to see if we can make it to Mail
Trail Hollow which has lots of waterfalls and is somewhere I’d like to check
out. We don’t get far, at Sulphur Creek the water is very high, where the
road crosses the creek it's at least 50 feet wide, fast and appears deep. Back
to the truck we go, we encountered much more water than expected making North Fork
Illinois Bayou and other creeks beautiful, the shelter was pretty cool too. We only hiked 2 miles
with an altitude gain of 270 feet.
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headwaters of North Fork (Feb. 2024)
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North Fork Illinois
Bayou: Statistics Chart 81 Parking area B is easy to get to down Sulphur Road
(CR180 or FR1809). From Sand Gap (Pelsor) at the
intersection Highway 7/16 go east on Highway 16 0.7 miles and turn right
(south) on Sulphur Road. Stay on Sulphur
Road all the way down to the North Fork with the parking spot on the right at an old road intersection (FR 93697A), it’s about 7 miles from Hwy.16 to North
Fork Illinois Bayou.
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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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