The weather broke my way this past week so I made a dash Tuesday afternoon to spend couple nights and days at Hercules Glades Wilderness.

I got to the Blair Ridge trailhead just before sundown so I made camp on the ridge after just 15 minutes of hiking on the trail. Before the sun had set I had camp set up and a small campfire going. An hour later it was perfectly dark and clear so after dinner I laid back and watched the stars and listened to the forest for a bit before crawling into the hammock.

The next morning I hiked back to the car and dumped some stuff I didn't need and filled a 1 liter container with beer. It was about an even trade off in weight, but my pack was still just over 30lbs. I have some more trimming to do, but I'm getting there...



From there I hiked down into the creek bed in the hollow on the west side of the trail. The hollow is about 2.5 miles long and leads right down to "The Falls" on Long Creek. This time of year there's usually water in the bottoms of a hollow this big and that always makes for an interesting bushwhack.



I wasn't disappointed. The creek had water flowing about half the time with long dry stretches where the water just disappeared under the rock bottoms. There were lots of pools and small falls and several nice sized shelters in the rock ledges above the creek. I took the time to meander and explore around. I found a few good spots to leave a coin under a small stack of rocks and several great places to spend a night or two.










Around 3:00pm I made it to The Falls. I had the entire Wilderness to myself so that's where I decided to spend the night. Had anyone been at The Falls I would have headed back into the hollow from whence I came. I've never spent the night there before. I've always bushwhacked into the forest and slept far from the trails and known campsites. I found my spot on a ledge a little downstream and made camp.



After fiddle-farting all morning, around noon the next day I started up the trail from The Falls back up to the car. I wanted to explore the ridge it follows a bit more so I took it slow and stopped a lot and wondered around where I got the hankering to. Among other spots I found a small grove of Pine and stopped to rest under them for a bit, and a little further on I stopped where there was a unique exposed limestone area on the top of the ridge, just off the trail. It was one of those spots where you can feel something magic. I walked around it looking for the best place to sit, found it, and took my pack off and sat there for awhile to get a feel for the place.



After a bit I saw a day hiker coming down the trail. When I saw him coming I was on my feet getting water and moving around and making noise, the hunter orange blazes on my pack were fluttering in the wind. I waited to make eye contact before saying "Hi" but he had his head down and was steaming towards The Falls. I wasn't more than 20 feet away from him when he zoomed past me. He never even saw me, and he zoomed right by the magic spot and didn't feel a thing.

As I watched him steam on out of sight I knew for sure that it's a magic spot because it made me completely invisible.

From up there Lower Pilot Knob is completely visible to anyone that looks its way. Years ago I stashed an Altoids tin full of coins and other highly valuable stuff way up there. I wondered if it's still there. Probably is, I don't think many people ever get up there and a lot of them might not see it if they did.



By then it was past four o`clock and I remembered I had one icy cold beer left in my car at the trailhead and that provided the inspiration I needed to haul my pack that last half mile back. It was a great couple nights and days, and my timing was perfect too. It's been raining, windy, and cold since I got back.

Hey Bill, is that whole area limestone and dolomite? Its hard to tell from the photos but that is what I'm guessing.

Hercules Glades resides in the Salem Plateau of the Ozarks. This is described as having dolostone bedrock in Wikipedia. But I've not found that in HG. The NF brochure for the Wilderness describes it as having limestone outcroppings, which is what I was on in the photo on the ridge.

There is dolomite though. Rocks that are shimmering with small crystals are scattered about with little rhyme or reason are abundant here. I have some big ones in rock walls I've made for garden beds.

Photos seldom really do the Ozarks justice. Mine sure don't. Because it is so dense I suppose.

Everything changes every few minutes while your hiking at HG. The trail on the ridge and the bushwhack in the hollow below it are completely different hikes, and you never really see what's in between them from either, and odds are you're missing some pretty cool stuff.

With this hike I've covered the western half of the park pretty well. I've done all the major hollows and ridges and trails and a lot of poking around in between. There's a big hollow on the eastern side named "Pees Hollow" that I've only peeked down into. I'll probably do that the next time I head out there.

I guess I must be "Creek Bagging"

You crack me up Bill. Its just called exploring.

I know what you mean about the photos though. The more close in a place is, the more the photos don't really show the character of the area (at least with my photography).

Boy, I haven't been down to Hercules Glade in 30 years! Sure loved it down there. I remember reading somewhere that the glades in the Ozarks are growing over with cedars because of fire suppression (or maybe because the Native Americans aren't around managing the landscape with fire to promote open habitats). Sure would be a shame. There are a lot of interesting and unusual plants in those glades.
By the way, you might find this of interest, Bill: "Glade" seems like a pretty unusual sort of placename to use for an open area in a forest. Most places I hike out here in California just say "meadow" in the name. But up in the Mendocino Nat'l Forest and the Yolla Bolly Wilderness, in northern California, "glade" is very common in place names. I've always wondered about how that came to pass. Was that area explored and named by transplanted ozarkers? Or is there some sort of other common connection with the ozark hillfolk, like common roots in Appalachia, or Scotland? I'd love to know the answer.
On a related topic, "park" is a common place name used for a mountain meadow up in Washington (Van Trump Park in Mt Rainier, for eg). That has always seemed odd to me.

The last pic, and that of the rocks my pack is on, show a "Glade" there. There are many, and some are pretty big. Unlike "Meadows" in the western mountains, which I recall as low areas and more like marshes, (I made the mistake of walking into one once and filled my shoes with muck) these glades are on ridges and hillsides and are very rocky with very thin soil.

We have a problem with Eastern Red Cedar crowding out other species, but that's not necessarily related to fire suppression. I'd say it's more a result of over logging and not planting native species afterwards. When Hercules Glades was acquired by the Forest Service there was nothing much left there. Most of the Mark Twain NF was acquired for the same reason. After every salable thing was sold these properties were abandoned by their dead-broke owners. During those times top top soil was badly eroded.

After logging ALL the native pine to make railroad timbers in the late 1800's the forested areas were invaded by hardwoods, mostly oak. When the oak became sellable it was cut for charcoal and forests were stripped bare again. Red Cedar started invading the area then, and this is what we have now. In the few areas where the Pine was not cut, it still grows, and neither oaks nor cedar have choked them out.

The aromatic Red Cedar is now harvested here (on private land) and shipped all over to make cedar lined chest, closets, hand crafts, and many other items. My own property is filled with it. I haven't harvested much of it yet, but will soon.

The Conservation Dept. sells Pine and Oak (and other) seedlings for very cheap here, and I've planted some pine already here. But planting seedlings is no easy task in this rocky soil here, so it's a very slow process for me to get them set.



Yes there are! I had no idea how much so until a year or so ago when I had the pleasure of guiding a group of Botanist from several State agencies on a seed collecting expedition in Hercules Glades. We didn't even make it a half mile into the park that day. They were stopping every 10 feet and were as excited as kids in an all you can eat for free candy store with each new find they made.

I go out there every Autumn to get a few Coral Mushrooms. The hollow I hiked on this trip is loaded with them. Here's a link to a video of me doing that. This video was shot a few years ago right on the ridge where I went, and my front yard

Sounds like fun, taking biologists out to collect seed! I've been a longtime subscriber to Natural History magazine, and they have had a regular column called This Land, by Robert Mohlenbrock, a professor at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. He takes regular field trips to various natural areas around the country and writes about them, and he has done many in the midwest, including at least one in an ozark glade (I forget which one). You'd probably find his articles interesting. Anyway, I think what he said is that the glades are formed on soils that are naturally thin and low in nutrients. (out here we have serpentine areas that are kind of similar for the same reason, and that oaks and such never could grow well on them, even before logging. Cedar are a different matter, and they grow on glades just like they grow on those rocky exposed cliffs down on the Buffalo. I know he talked a lot about the rare endemics in the glades. Kind of made me proud of my native Ozarks to hear about it.
Man I would love to be able to see how the Ozarks were before they clearcut them!

That's true. You can see it in the pics I posted. But the FS does come in now and then to do some restoration. I don't know if burning would help or not. They just cut the cedars down and let them decompose. They do controlled burns here a lot though and the cedars seem to survive that just fine.

Bill, those coral mushrooms are beautiful looking! I might add, tasty looking too. What else do you know about the back woods edibles?

Do you play an instrument (that doesn't weigh a lot). I can fake open E and D slide, and with a little work A and G, on guitar (I have a thrasher acoustic where the action is very high). See, then I can use the old "honey, I found someone to jam with" routine.

I have a book, "Missouri Wild Edibles" that I take with me on some of my hikes. We have quite a few around here, and lot's of herbs and medicinal plants too. Purple Coneflower grows wild all around here. In just a few weeks it will be time to hunt Morel Mushrooms, which the locals really love. I've had no luck finding them, but enough friends have that I usually get a taste.

I can't even play "Smoke On The Water". But I do have an old Peavey T-60 electric guitar. You could try and teach me a song or two

If you can sing, that counts! (cause I can't sing even though I try). I can see it now, "honey, they (Bill, Lewis and Clark, and the dogs) need a slide player so I've got to go". The key is to not give up to much information!

I have actually heard of the morel mushroom...they are supposed to be very good eating. I think this is all great stuff. Somewhere around here I have a book on medicinal plants of the US...I'll have to find the thing.

Three years in a row we have found one morel mushroom when backpacking in Missouri. But only one. And we never had any good way to prepare it, so just boiled it and served on crackers as a snack. We used to find them almost every year when I was a kid in Illinois. My mom would batter and fry them, but I didn't like mushrooms back then (not sure if I ever actually tried them) so I missed out.

Coral mushrooms seem to be a lot easier to find. There is a section of trail we have "adopted" and do maintenance on several times a year, that has had a lot of them in the fall the last few years. We never tried them until last year, but they were good.

I have quite a few that come up in the forest behind our house, but they're small compared to those in the video and not near as abundant. They do let me know when their ready in HG though

I make a simple white sauce and add the coral mushrooms, finely chopped, to it. That's pretty good.

The morels are really good and fried is the way most everyone does it that I know. People sell them for up $50 a pound here and they go fast.

I inoculated four 6"x3' White Oak logs about 2 1/2 years ago with Shiitake spores and set them in the forest behind our house. I've been getting about 2-4 lbs in the Spring and again in the Fall from them since, with a few even coming in during the heat of Summer. They are delicious too and contain lots of stuff that's very good for you. I might get lucky enough to get some this week since we've had some good soaking rains here and it's going to warm up for a spell now.

Last weekend we did almos the same bushwack as you. Saw the cave and the falls. We only went in 6 minutes from the Blair Ridge Trailhead and sat up basecamp then on Sat morning bushwhacked that same creek. It was a pretty hike.

December 30th, 2011 we had a 43 low and 60 degrees during the day. It was a great little hike. We had to be back in before newyears eve but those 7 miles were neat. The falls at Long creek had alot of water flowing and it was a perfect outing.

http://readyrangers.tzo.com you can find a report and more pictures of this area. We have hiked all over Hercules Glades for 18 years. WE just finished up a hike down to Richland Creek 4 weeks ago. Lows were 22 and highs 44..snow melt water with creek crossings it was nice!

Thanks for the write up and the pictures...

Mark Jones

Welcome to the forums Mark!

Loved your trip report and video. I would've been pretty excited to get to talk to Obama out there. To think that I just missed him!

It's not near as big a deal, but you just missed me! (on the plus side, I wouldn't have asked you to vote for me if we had met up

I was there from Wednesday to Friday afternoon and I was parked at Blair Ridge too. I left about 4:30-5:00pm

This time I hiked about 100 yards down the trail and then took a hard right and hiked down into the hollow on the other side of the trail, then up and over into the next one, and followed the wet weather creek in it down to where that hollow meets up with Long Creek. I spent the first night there, then followed Long Creek down to The Falls and spent a night there.

The next day I took the trail back to Blair Ridge and stopped at the car for lunch, then I bushwhacked south from the Blair Ridge trailhead parking area down into the Mark Twain NF. There is spring about 1/3 of a mile SW from the trailhead there and I wanted to find it. I thought I might head down from it to the North Prong of Cane Creek and spend the night down there somewhere. I found the spring, but decided to head home for the night and save the bushwhack down to Cane Creek for another time. That is a really steep and deep hollow there and if I'm going to head all the way down into it I'm going to have to spend a couple nights there before I climb back out

I'll post a couple pictures of my hike here in a day or two. I had a ton of fun again there too, and I found some cool spots while wandering around. And, yes, we sure had some amazing weather for being out there!

Ha. We always have a great time. I was wondering what was down to the east of the trail head. It's always fun to go bushwhacking and exploring.

That bushwhack that you posted pictures of at the beginning of this thread is prety neat. It would be interesting to try and bushwhackup back up that in reverse from Long Creek Falls. With out a GPS it would be difficult because of so many ravines comming in there... it would be a challenge for sure. It would be a good test of topo and compass.

Next weekend we have 60 men and boys camping over night in a cave up by Conway Missouri. WE have camped in that cave about 14 times over the past 18 years. We do a lot of backpacking with the Royal Rangers. Perhaps 6 backpacks a year with these boys. They don't have the good gear (most of them) so we will go in about a half of a mile setup base camp and then day hike from there... It works good for these boys and dads that are not geared up for this stuff.

We are from Springfield, MO so we do a lot of stuff down in Arkansas as well. I need to get my Hennessy Hammock out and go hang. Do you winter camp with your hammock? Do you use a under quilt or pod system?

Mark Jones

We're practically neighbors. I'm just a few miles from Branson, near to Bull Shoals Lake.

I mostly only go winter camping here. I've used my little hammock several times, and I used blue foam sleeping pad with a piece of bubble foil insulation on top of it in my hammock and that worked good. Most people I know here prefer an underquilt, but I've also used just the bubble foil by itself and I think that's all you need here if it's above 30º.

I'm not a hard core hammocker yet. I'm still searching for the best shelter for my style of backpacking. The hammock has some advantages, but I haven't refined using it here yet.

The last few nights out I used a 10'x10' tarp and ground sheet and a neoair pad with a piece of bubble foil under it. That worked out pretty good too, and it was fast and easy to set up. The neoair is key in that set-up. I was very impressed with it. Lying down on it after a hard hike was pure pleasure.

So I'm going to focus on ways to rig a tarp for a bit now. Personally, I really like a Baker's Tent rigging a lot for here. This is sort of what I had my tarp rigged like one night:



I think I'll try to make a small tent like that out of SOL emergency blankets taped together next (you can get them at Bass Pro). I'm thinking of a floor that measures 7'x4'. It would be about 4' high. Should be pretty cheap to make, light weight, and warm too. Probably won't last for years though.

I had a canvas bakers tent. Sold it to a group that needed a tent. We have 3 other canvas tents. Teepee, Marquee and a mess tent v shaped roof about 16 feet long 12 wide. Outpost property (Royal Rangers)

I purchased a Cabela's 12x12 nylon tarp it's corner to corner so it's really about a 10x10. I thought it might come in handy for some miminal camping or wet weekend camping.

I havent had my Hennesy hamock out this year. I need to. I dont' have a under quilt but do have the windshield bubble wraps.

Have you walked the east side of Blairs Ridge following along Long creek? I havne't been up that way. I thought that would be a fun bushwack.

Did you get hit by the Tornado's last weekend?

Mark Jones

I did pretty good in my hammock with a blue foam pad and a piece of bubble foil insulation. My hammock isn't quite big enough for me, but I was warm in it with that set-up.

I haven't been all the way up the creek yet, but I'd love to do that bushwhack. I've hiked Long Creek from the mouth about 3/4 of the way upstream and most all of the hollows that enter it on both sides from The Falls down.

There are some great spots to camp above The Falls, and I still have to get down into the the NE corner of the wilderness there. I've hiked a bit of the trail from the Lookout Tower that way, but not much of it.

If you'd like to get together and hike a bit there I'm up for it. BTW, I made the Baker's Tent from the SOL blankets and it works great. I'd be glad to bring it so you can check it out.