Thanks Marty - I was looking at the map for the put-in name when I posted (because I’m not as familiar with them as you guys who live nearer and have done it more often). I got the wrong one. Good catch.
I wasn’t able to arrive until Wednesday, got camp set up prior to the rain but man that night did it rain. No paddling Thursday or Friday as river was high. Thursday, me, Tom, Laurel and Pete drove down to Dawt Mill and man that river was high, tried to get to other mills in the area but roads where flooded out. Friday, me, Tom, Laurel and Tony did a short hike, it was just good to go do something (I’m not a fan of just sitting at camp). Saturday was sunny and beautiful and we paddled Hammond Camp to Blair Bridge, per GPS 10.7 miles and our moving time was 2 hours 15 minutes. You didn’t have to paddle, just stay in the middle and float on down. The Falls were washed out but I got pics of Tony going through. I had to come home Sunday seeing that I had to be back at work Monday. It was great to see the few folks that were there, wasn’t the best trip due to the rain but I guess it could have been worse. Here is a link to my pics, should just have to click on, If it doesn’t work let me know. Tony - unsure if it will let you save any of the pics, just email me your email and I can send you whatever you want, was great meeting you, hope to paddle with you again. Sunday, May 22, 2022 8:26 PM by Pam Huddleston
Sorry, I do not have any photos either.
I paddled on a downriver trip with a group from the Chattanooga, Tennessee area prior to the Rendezvous from Sunday May 1 through Tues May 3 so I did not arrive at Twin Bridges until late afternoon of Tuesday. The group I paddled with had intended to stretch their trip out to Saturday May 7 and take out at Powder Mill, but I later found that because of rain and a steadily rising river they decided to push on down to Powder Mill and take off by late Wednesday. The National Park Service had already closed the Current River below Logyard by that time and by Thursday had closed the entire Current River and Jacks Fork.
Sunday May 1 was a beautiful sunny day. Our group put in at Cedargrove in early afternoon and camped at a gravel bar about a mile or so below Akers Ferry. Rain and thunderstorms were in the forecast for Monday but our group was able to make it to Pulltite Campground just before the rain began. Most of the group set up tents and hammocks under or next to the old pavilion near the landing. I set up my tent at the camp host site. We were the only ones in the entire campground. Unfortunately, the rain started before I could get the fly on the tent so I got a moderate amount of water inside.
Monday night at Pulltite there was some wind and an impressive lightning show. Unfortunately, four baffles on my inflatable Exped sleeping pad blew out successively and I could no longer sleep on it. So I had to deflate the pad and sleep on top of it on a wet tent floor. Between the wind, lightning, and wet ground I got little sleep and felt like I was about 200 years old Tuesday morning.
Tuesday I stayed with the group to look at Pulltite Spring and cabin and Fire Hydrant Spring and then pushed on downstream to Round Spring where I had left my truck. I got there just after midday and loaded up. I had to make a lengthy detour to the Walmart at Salem to get some type of pad I could use to sleep on. The best thing they had was one of those old, blue, closed-cell roll up jobs, but it was better than what I had. I got to Twin Bridges sometime by late afternoon and set up next to Tony’s tent.
By Wednesday morning the upper Jacks Fork was running at an ideal level to do the stretch from South Prong access to Buck Hollow. I have made no secret about the fact that the upper Jacks is my favorite part of the ONSR. With the rain forecast for that day and the next it was clear that the Jacks would be too high by Thursday so I lobbied to run it. We found that the low bridge on the South Prong was nearly completely blocked by fallen trees so we had to put in a couple of hundred yards downstream at a gravel bar just below the junction of the North and South Prongs.
The Prongs run was beautiful, as always but the stream was about twice as wide as it has been when I have run it at lower levels. It was running about 440 cfs at the time we put on. Paddlers included Brad, Tom, Laurel, Jim (Snarvol), Pat, Tony, Dan C., and Marty. Brad was paddling a polyethylene kayak that was new to him but did very well in it as did everyone else.
We found that the Buck Hollow access had changed a bit from the last time I saw it. The bank got scoured out pretty badly so the descent to the water was steeper, and a lot of gravel had been deposited in the adjacent stream bed which meant that boats had to be walked a short distance to get to the bank. The first of us arrived there just before the rain started, which occurred as Dan was loading his canoe onto his Suburban (he was going back to Eminence), and rain continued as we went back to shuttle the vehicles down to Buck Hollow and load up to return to Twin Bridges.
With the rain Wednesday afternoon and evening the North Fork came up predictably and was still rising somewhat by Thursday morning. It probably would have been possible to paddle the North Fork on Friday but it would have been something of a flush and nobody was enticed. Saturday the six of us who remained Pam, Tom, Laurel, Tony, Brad, and I, paddled the North Fork from Hammond Camp (AKA North Fork Recreation Area) to Blair Bridge access as Pam described. A lot of features were washed out although there were some pretty good wave trains. Brad, paddling a kayak without a skirt, had to empty water after a couple of these. We anticipated having to portage around the McKee low bridge above the Falls and indeed that was the case. The right side of that bridge is now nearly destroyed to the point that only a four wheel drive vehicle with high ground clearance could possibly cross it. We portaged our boats and gear over the concrete boulder field that is the remains of the right side of the bridge and had lunch before proceeding on down to Blair access. The entire left half of the Falls was completely washed out. The drop on the right side of the Falls was pretty well submerged but it still kicked up some moderately large waves. There was a guy on the right bank fly fishing right there so I went left as did most others.
Sunday morning Pam, Tom, and Laurel packed up and left and we were down to three hangers-on. The upper Jacks Fork had come back down to a very attractive level, around 600 cfs or so, to do the next stretch below Buck Hollow down to Rymers. If anything, that stretch is even more scenic than the Prongs with some impressive bluffs. It does require driving a fairly long stretch of narrow gravel road to get to Rymers access, however. Tony, Brad, and I had a fairly uneventful paddle but it was a quite windy day and I, in a deep, highly-rockered whitewater canoe got blown all over the place. When we got to Jam-up cave none of us clambered up to the actual entrance, but it looked to me as if several new huge boulders had calved off the overhang of the cave mouth and had now completely blocked access to the interior. I could be mistaken about that because I declined climbing up the muddy bank. Tony decided that Sunday was his favorite day paddling in the Ozarks.
After paddling the three of us had dinner at a surprisingly-good Mexican restaurant in Mountain View that Tony had found earlier in the week. Monday morning I cooked breakfast at my campsite as the restaurant was closed. Tony and Brad packed up and hit the road and as has often been the case in the past, I was the last one out of the campground.
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My trip started with some hiking in southern Illinois- camped at garden of the gods (one of several parks with that name). The campground is on a ridge and I endured a pretty significant lightening/rain storm. While the main overlook trail is an easy short walk many of the other trails are horse trails so they were muddy from use and the rain.
In Arkansas I met the Ozark Mountain Paddlers at Turner’s Bend Campground. Wanting to see as much of the river as I could, I elected to leave the group and paddle the full 15 miles back to camp from Wolf Pen Gap.
I enjoyed paddling by the different groups on the river and enjoyed some surfing along the way. The rain on Sun encouraged an early departure of Ozark Mountain Paddlers so I headed over to the Buffalo after repacking my car and to ready myself for camping out of the boat.
I got a late start Sunday afternoon and made arrangements with Buffalo Outdoor to retrieve my car from Boxley (put in). They would leave it in their parking lot several days and then take it to Highway 14 (just before Buffalo Point) in a few days. I told them to bring the car a day early just in case I made good time. This proved to be a very good decision.
I was told things might get a little scrapey for the first few miles out of Boxley but water levels were fine. I had overpacked my Pyranha 12r and had a small soft cooler strapped on top of the boat. Note to self: take less sh##! Nothing could go wrong with this plan- starting late in the day, by myself, running some ww in an overloaded boat that was poorly packed (too much weight in the back). Weirdly enough I just considered this good fun, and portaged once around for a strainer but the run from Boxley was uneventful. The rain was intermittent. I got out of sight of the Ponca Bridges and made my own camp on river left. With rain predicted I set up my tent a good 6 ft above the river.
I went to bed feeling rather smug- the rain was pouring down but the tent was dry and the paco pad was comfy. Then around 2 a.m. I awoke to a strange sensation. It felt like I was on a waterbed. I unzipped the tent and discovered that the edge of the river was running under and now flowing into my tent. My underlayer clothing and water bottles had already washed away.
A mad dash insued inside the tent to find the headlamp, get dressed, and throw a host of dry bags into the tent from the back vestibule so they wouldn’t float away. Unfortunately none of the bags were closed so they just got tossed in open. The pfd went on along with every stitch of clothing that I had left. By now the tent was completely flooded and I’m standing in knee deep moving water. I zipped up the tent to keep stuff from floating away and waded it to higher ground. It took a couple of more trips to get the boat and gear to higher ground and now the water I was wading in was up to my armpits.
Once on high ground I took stock of what I had left. Fortunately my losses were light- base layer paddling clothes, some water bottles (some full, some empty), a bag for the stove, a ground cloth for the vestibule and a pair of wool socks. The wallet and keys (electronic) were wet but medication and food were dry. I put sticks in the ground to monitor the water level. I wringed out the sleeping bag and carefully repacked loose items that had been in the tent back into drybags. I completely packed the boat with the exception of the sleeping pad, wet sleeping bag, and tent. I did this in case I needed to evacuate quickly again. I actually got some sleep- wet, soaked to the bone but surprisingly warm (neoprene pants, paddling jacket, pile, rainjacket).
At daylight the water was no longer rising. I attempted to see if I could walk back to Ponca. The idea of some hot chocolate sounded good at the buffalo outdoor center. I took my paddle to help me wade and wore my pfd . Unfortunately I couldn’t safely cross a creek to get to the road and the buffalo outdoor center. I returned to my campsite defeated.
I boiled silty flood waters and enjoyed hot chocolate and coffee. The river started to recede slowly. A canada goose came by and squawked at me to add insult to injury. I took this as sign to move on, so about 10 am Monday morning I boated down to the horse campground where I dried out. This was sketchy because the river was still moving fast with some debri floating past . I was glad I was in a skirted kayak but capsizing would have been ugly and involved a long swim due to the flow Unfortunately, the distance between the boat and the horse camper tent sites were about 3 tenths of a mile (one way ) I had no mesh bag or backpack and everything had to be packed small to fit in the boat behind the seat or in front of the bulkhead. So it took a lot of trips to bring everything up to the natl. park service campsite. My gps was on and between my attempted walk back to Ponca and carrying gear to the new campsite I had logged over 8 miles of walking on monday. The rest of the day was spent drying out and waiting for the water to drop.
The next day I set out in the boat. The gps revealed that I was floating 5 mph. I had a day to make up (waiting for the water to drop) so I floated 35 miles. The next day without trying much I floated 37 miles. I was almost 1/2 way into the trip before I encountered other people on the river. I had gone from being behind schedule to being ahead. My last day on the buffalo I tried not to take any forward strokes but still finished 20 miles by 1:00 pm. My car was delivered there by the time I finished.
My adventures in Missouri have been reported by others- north fork of the white, jack’s fork. I enjoyed meeting new folks and paddling with them.
On the way home I paddled at Mingo WMA (Missouri) and camped and hiked at Giant City State Park (Illinois). Once home I looked up the Ponca usgs gauge. Looks like it jumped from 300 cfs to 7,000 cfs the night I got flooded out.
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During the evening of Sunday April 24 and early morning of Monday April 25, the USGS gauge on the Buffalo River at Ponca rose from about 300 cfs to over 7000 cfs and the stage rose from just under 3 1/2 feet to just over 10 1/2 feet.
