Special Thanks to Rob Batchman, Jennifer Napier and Justin Fisher for sharing these pictures with us.  Click on a picture for a larger view.  Zip file of all these pictures.

More pictures after the report.

What a warm weekend in the middle of November! Absolutely b-e-a-utiful weather to get out and hike and enjoy the late fall wilderness.

It's been eight years since I've been down to Big Bluff. The last time I went was with a group of my Royal Ranger friends, and today's trip was also with the Royal Rangers, some new guys and some of the same guys.

Our group of 7 left after work/school on Friday evening and drove on down from Springfield/Ozark, picking up our friend Jennifer in Branson along the way, bringing our total to 8. We made the trip in about an hour and a half or so. We arrived at the parking area a little before 7:00 that evening, and the parking lot was already mostly full!

We quickly grabbed our backpacks and gear, and hiked in roughly a half mile along the Centerpoint Trail till we came to a "relatively" flat area off the side of the trail and set up camp for the night. Everyone had their tents set up and a good pile of firewood was gathered in no time. It was a great evening of gathering around the campfire, talking and laughing and cooking dinner.

We had decide before hand to have a little dessert cook-off, and several folks brought some amazing desserts to share. Hot chocolate, apple crumble, and blueberry crisp were just some of the delicious offerings!

It didn't take long for everyone to start drifting off to bed one by one, and almost everyone was in their tents by midnight.

The next morning was a great time of gathering around the campfire once again, cooking breakfast and getting ready for the 2+ mile hike down to the bluff.

The Centerpoint Trail has some good flat stretches along it's course, but starts dropping some here and there along the first mile, and then there is a really good hill that drops at a nice clip for several hundred yards. There's an old spring house along the trail at the bottom of the steep hill, with another even older one (I'm assuming) nearby built out of stacked rock into the hill side.

After hiking close to 2 miles, there is a spur trail off of the Centerpoint Trail called the Goat Trail, that leads out on Big Bluff. We turned down this trail, and it is about 1/4 mile or better until you get to the beginnings of Big Bluff. At first, you're still kinda in the trees as the bluff wall comes along the left side of the trail, but it doesn't take long for the edge of the bluff to come, and the views really open up of the Buffalo River valley below.

Big Bluff is reportedly the tallest sheer bluff face in the midwest. The entire bluff is somewhere around 500+ feet tall, and the ledge that the Goat Trail leads out onto is about 300 or so feet above the river. You just can't hardly beat that view from up there!

We spent a good couple hours out there exploring the bluff and trail, eating lunch and relaxing, and just soaking it all in. Being such a nice warm Saturday, it was very busy, lots and lots of people hiking in and out. There was a little side bet going on between Rob and Mark as to how many people we'd see out on the trail and bluff and back, and by the end, the count had gotten well over 230 people!!

Soon, it was time to head out and make that 2 mile hike back UPhill towards camp. It is a good climb back out, somewhere around 800' elevation difference between Big Bluff and the parking lot. It was hot and sweaty, and felt every bit in the 80s today, but it is so good to have such warm beautiful weather in the middle of November. I can't wait to come back here again, and maybe even hike past the far end of the bluff and follow the little trail all the way down to the river...
(I looked back thru previous blog posts, and I believe today was the fourth time I've been to Big Bluff)

On our way back home. we stopped at the JB Trading post in Compton for some refreshments (we were all so thirsty!), and I was able to grab a copy of Tim Ernst's long awaited NEW third edition of Arkansas Waterfalls.
I've got A LOT of reading to do and even MORE waterfalls to get out and Explore!!