Another Waterfall Trek

Copperhead Falls seen from the top.

This past weekend found me making yet another journey to our summer home in Northwest Arkansas to deal with the aftermath of the Epic Ice Storm of 2009. Thankfully, I didn’t have to do any manual labor this time. I just paid a man I hired over the over phone to climb up in our once magnificent shade trees and cut down the hanging limbs. I realize hiring people over the phone to perform work the results of which you won’t see for a week is fraught with hazard but it worked out well this time.

On my way back to Little Rock, I detoured over to the Buffalo River to hike Indian Creek and see Copperhead Falls and Tunnel Cave Falls. The hike is billed as a dangerous one, but I found it less hazardous than the hike to the slot canyon on Shop Creek I took a few weeks ago. Indian Creek is actually the next drainage over from Shop Creek. An ambitious hiker could do both in one day if he started early enough.

The trailhead is at Kyle’s Landing where you follow the Buffalo River Trail a short way until the trail up Indian Creek branches off. Though there are several hiking and horse trails criss-crossing through there, the signage at trail intersections is very good. A sign at the Indian Creek branch warns that the park service doesn’t maintain the trail up Indian Creek. Even so, the trail is pretty beaten out and easy to follow. The trail becomes several trails along the way, but they all lead to the same place. You can’t get lost because you’re in a canyon you can’t get out of without rock-climbing gear. The Epic Ice Storm felled trees across the the trail at several points, but foot traffic has already created new trails around most of those. In two places huge trees that have been down for probably a few years forced me to do my patented limbo moves to get past them. In one spot, the trail follows a narrow ledge about a foot wide where care should be taken so as not to fall. The ledge is only about six feet above the creek bed, so a fall shouldn’t be fatal. The trickiest part is negotiating a tree fallen across the ledge. That’s where the limbo skills come in handy. The canyon itself is like a large slot canyon in many places with bare limestone bedrock in the bottom and a few deep holes similar to what they call tinajas out west.

A creek flows through a cave at the top of the drainage and then drops 31 feet into the middle of the canyon. I thought the waterfall in the above photo was Tunnel Cave Falls until I started writing this post and re-read the description in Tim Ernst’s waterfall guidebook. When I got to the waterfall in the picture, I stopped and took my photos and didn’t notice the actual cave until I turned around to look back downstream. Up above me a few yards down was the cave and there wasn’t any water running out of it. Still thinking the waterfall that was actually running was Tunnel Cave Falls, I thought to myself, “I wonder why Tim didn’t mention this other cave in the guidebook.” That’ll teach me to read the guidebook descriptions a little better.

You can continue up the canyon beyond the waterfall in the picture. You have to do about 10 feet of minor rock climbing to continue. A piece of string hangs down from a sapling to make the climb easier. But the hike had taken me longer than I thought it would and I had to turn back in order to make it out before dark. Besides, I didn’t like the looks of that length of string. However, while I was there, some hikers came down from above and the string didn’t give them any problems.