Upper Buffalo Wilderness:
Low Hole to Whiteley Hole
September 11, 2005
It's been the toughest summer ever. My job
has always been more demanding in the summer, but this year
there were fewer breaks and more... stress. Relief finally came
from a slog up the Upper Buffalo River from the Whiteley Hole
to a spot 2 miles upstream, that I’m calling the Low
Hole.
I started out around 2 p.m. and it wasn't
exactly fun for the first hour - it was hot, the backpack was
hurting my neck, and instead of walking through the water like
I should have, I made several bushwhacks through the thick
stuff on the bank. I was wearing shorts, and my shins got
all scratched up in no time. Once I figured out that walking
with waterlogged boots in the shallow stream was better
than negotiating hostile vegetation, my afternoon got a lot
easier.
My goal was to explore at least two miles
upstream. I had no idea what I would find near the end, but I
was hoping for a spot unique enough to deserve what I consider
“landmark” status. Luck was on my side - I came
upon a small but deep hole of water with a pile of huge
boulders on the east side. This was the ONLY hole of water for
several hundred yards. The water level was several feet lower
than the surrounding river bed, hence my name for this
location.
Down “stream” from the Low Hole
for almost a half mile, the mighty Buffalo was a parched river
of boulders. Not a drop of water anywhere, but still amazing
and scenic.
As I continued back downstream, I
encountered only one small pool of water before reaching the
main attraction on this section of the river - a long, deep
hole populated by massive boulders. Dr. Neil Compton published
two photos of this location in “The Buffalo River in
Black and White”, referring to it as either “the
boulder pool” or the “rock barrage” at
“the Hedges place”.
I was hoping to go for a swim, and the
water was certainly deep enough, but it seemed to be stagnant -
brown and murky - so I stayed out.
Earlier in the day as I was hiking in, I
took a bunch of pictures with my little point-and-shoot camera.
Most of the shots didn’t turn out so great, but I am
including this one (at right) because it includes the sky and
surrounding valley.
Below the Hedges Hole was an interesting
series of small rocks that stair-stepped downward. I imagined
how awesome it would look with water cascading over those
rocks, and told myself I’d have to return to see that
someday.
A loud trickling sound coming from the East
bank told me I’d reached another landmark on the river,
Pickle Spring. Here was another deep, narrow hole of water. A
thick patch of ferns and Touch-Me-Nots, with their funny orange
flowers, was hiding the spot where the cold spring water was
spilling into the river. I couldn’t locate one specific
place where the spring water was coming from; it seemed to
emerge from several locations on a wooded slope above the
river.
I’m sorry I didn’t have time to
take any pictures documenting the pool or the spring itself; it
was past sunset when I arrived at the spot, and I still had a
mile of water to splash through to get back to the truck. I did
pause long enough to get a photo of a Cardinal Flower.
On the hike in, I had made a 90-degree turn
away from the river to satisfy my curiosity about a feature
I’d seen on a topographic map of the area - a long hole
of water not connected to the present stream. It was right
where the map said it would be. The opposite bank was an almost
vertical slope, suggesting that the duckweed-covered pond was
quite deep. I got the feeling that if I fell in, all sorts of
bad critters would would get me!
Back at the main river channel, shallow
running water was present for the rest of the walk downstream.
At the southern end of Luallen Field, driven into the river bed
was a water level gauge consisting of a white board with black
lines and numbers. Up on the east bank was a primitive road
going into the field. I spotted some sort of official sign
there - either USGS or Forest Service.
The half-mile section of the river below
Luallen Field was a series of shallow pools only a few inches
deep. I took the pictures below on the walk upstream earlier.
These shallow areas were bustling with life. There was a
constant pattern of critters swimming away from the edge of the
bank as I approached.
The Whiteley Hole below the northern end of
Luallen Field was where the day’s journey both started
and ended.
