Slate Falls
April 7, 2005
I’ve got this long list of waterfalls
that “must be seen”, and a mid-week storm appeared
to dump a lot of rain on one of them in the Poteau Mountain
Wilderness Area. I took a Thursday off from work to check out
Slate Falls, getting up earlier than usual that morning and
getting all my stuff together so that I could head for the
woods as soon as I dropped the boys off at school.
The entire drive down Highway 71 through
the Arkansas river valley was filled with views of new spring
greenery, but once I turned onto Poteau Mountain Road and drove
up the mountain, the scenery reverted back to that of late
winter with Pines being the only trees with any green.
I arrived at the foggy parking area at 10
a.m., and snapped a photo with my point-and-shoot camera to
document the scene. The logging road that would take me to the
falls began at the back of a deer camp south of the falls. At
first the hike was mostly downhill, and the roadbed was more of
a temporary stream, but after about a quarter mile the road
leveled out and stayed relatively flat the rest of the way. It
was cold enough that I had to put on a pair of jersey gloves.
I snapped another picture to show the
typical view looking down the road, and another shot to show
how the surrounding woods were covered with a short variety of
blueberry bush. Though they’re not very good pictures,
I’m glad I took them because they help me go back to
those woods in my mind.
As I neared the end of my 2-mile hike and
could hear the roar of Slate Falls nearby, I pulled out a
xerox copy of the directions to the falls I got from my Arkansas
Waterfalls guidebook. I
made the big mistake of not paying close attention to the
directions, and dropped down the hillside on the wrong (south)
side of the falls. I soon found myself at the edge of a high
bluff, with no break in the bluff close enough to see. On the
plus side, things were a lot prettier on the hillside. There
were several plum and dogwood trees in bloom, and the ground
was dotted with trout lily leaves and the blooms of several
wildflowers.
I decided to follow the top of the bluff in
a downstream direction, hoping to find a place to get down
below the bluff. The sloping hillside was a dense obstacle
course of fallen trees, sticker vines and slick leaf-covered
rocks. But the scenery was worth it. About a hundred yards into
my slow quest, I found a break in the bluff, beside a beautiful
little waterfall.
Once below the bluff, it was a short
distance downhill to the stream below the falls. I’m
still a big pushover for any small stream running over, under,
and around boulders - and I’d hit the jackpot. But for
probably the first time ever, I showed some restraint and
didn’t get out the camera and take a hundred photos. I
headed upstream toward the falls, stopping only once to
photograph a spot in the stream I couldn’t resist.
The bushwhack to the falls was slow going.
The sides of the hollow were sloped, there were downed trees
everywhere, and the sticker vines were thick. I finally found
open, level terrain when I climbed up to the base of the
bluffline. Then I had to contend with several pouroffs raining
down from above.
The 54-foot waterfall was at the western
side of the hollow. After checking out the remains of a rock
building on the southern side of the hollow, I dropped down to
just below the falls and started climbing out of the hollow on
the north side. That was the side I should have come down to
begin with.
My last picture of the day (the top photo
on this page) was taken there around 3 o’clock, but
that’s not the end of my story. I climbed out of the
hollow in a northerly direction then made a hard left back
toward the stream above the falls. Somehow I thought the
logging road would be just above the big falls. Instead, it was
several hundred yards upstream.
The stream above the big falls alone would
have been worth the hike. There were lots and lots of nice
small waterfalls and cascades - five or six in the 6- to 8-foot
category. And the surroundings had a glade-like quality to it
with lots of open area and many cedars.
Once I finally got back up the logging
road, I stopped for a short break. I’d had my GPS
receiver out to keep me from getting lost, and I hung it on a
tree branch so it wouldn’t lose satellite reception.
After a cereal bar and a big swig of Mountain Dew I got on my
feet and headed south along the logging road to the truck.
I hiked a mile and a half before I reached
in my pocket for the GPSr and realized it was back at the
stream. To make a long story short, it was a 3-mile round-trip
hike to receive the GPSr, making the total foot travel for the
day 8 miles. At some point after finally retrieving the GPSr, I
sat down at the base of a tree for a small break. I leaned my
head back against the trunk and felt myself instantly dozing
off. That scared me in a way, because I’ve never been
that tired before. I thought about it on the drive home and
realized I’d been on the go for 8 hours non-stop. When
you’re bushwhacking through rough wilderness, even when
you’re standing still taking pictures you’re
exerting a lot of muscle power trying to stay balanced on
uneven footing.
I can’t wait to do it again!
