If a high school girl hadn’t broken a boy’s heart, would there be an Ozark Highlands Trail?
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Marci Johnson lops at the head of an Ozark Highlands Trail Association work crew Feb. 20, with Randy Parsons (in orange), Chr…
(By: BOB ROBINSON)
(Credit: Special to the Democrat-Gazette)
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Map showing Ozone Recreation Area.
(Credit: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)
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Ron Hierholzer (from left), Steven Parker, Russell Thomas and Bill Hignite make a switchback safer along the Ozark Highlands …
(By: BOB ROBINSON)
(Credit: Special to the Democrat-Gazette)
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Steven Parker cuts through a fallen tree that was blocking the Ozark Highlands Trail along Brushy Ridge.
(By: BOB ROBINSON)
(Credit: Special to the Democrat-Gazette)
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Steven Parker, Ron Hierholzer and Randy Parsons improve a switchback on a recent maintenance workday by the Ozark Highlands T…
(By: BOB ROBINSON)
(Credit: Special to the Democrat-Gazette)
Anyone who has stepped foot on the 218-mile hiking path through Northwest Arkansas should know that credit for its ongoing construction and maintenance falls squarely on the shoulders of the Ozark Highlands Trail Association. That group was brought together in large part by its first president, Tim Ernst.
The U.S. Forest Service began construction of the Ozark Highlands Trail in 1977. That summer, with the help of the Youth Conservation Corps and Youth Answering the Call to the Community, the first section of the trail was constructed from Shores Lake to White Rock Mountain.
During this early construction, Ernst visited, photographed and then hiked the trail as an employee of the Forest Service. He was employed to coordinate youth groups building short sections of trails.
But his love of hiking had begun even earlier, in 1972, when his high school sweetheart dumped him. Trying to distract him from his sorrow, his mother gave him a copy of The High Adventure of Eric Ryback. After reading that book, Ernst says, “My goal in life was to build a long-distance backpacking trail across Arkansas so I could hike like Eric.”
The next year (according to his blog, Cloudland Journal), he took his first Forest Service job, as one of 32 cave-trail guides hired for the opening of Blanchard Springs Caverns. A future preoccupied with forests unfolded from there.
Inspired by the book, in 1974 Ernst took his first long backpacking trip. But there wasn’t a path at that time across the Ozark Mountains; it was more like a 120-mile bushwhack from old Lake Fort Smith to near Ben Hur.
And the Forest Service was building along that route. But with the trail less than half completed, in 1981 the Forest Service announced plans to abandon the trail due to lack of money. With the approval of the Forest Service, Ernst called a meeting to assess public interest in saving the Ozark Highlands Trail using volunteer labor.
In September 1981, 50 people showed up for this first meeting at the old Fayetteville Library. That showed enough interest to form a club, and the Ozark Highlands Trail Association was born.
Besides himself (and he lives at Cloudland), Ernst knows of only three attendees of that meeting who still reside in Fayetteville: Luke Collins and Scott and Carolyn Crook (owners of Pack Rat Outdoor Center).
With Ernst at the helm, the association elected a board of directors, set monthly meetings and scheduled construction trips three weekends a month. The fourth weekend was set aside as a “fun” overnight backpack trip on the trail.
The first work performed by the volunteers was to construct a trail from Hare Mountain Trailhead (also known as Morgan Field) to Hare Mountain, which was the easternmost reach of the Ozark Highlands Trail at the time.
More than 34 years and 300,000 volunteer hours later, the Ozark Highlands Trail Association has more than 3,000 members residing in 22 states. It still follows the motto adopted during those early years to “Build, Maintain and Enjoy the Ozark Highlands Trail.”
But the association has a new goal these days: connecting the Ozark Highlands Trail with the Buffalo River Trail, and then Missouri’s Ozark Trail. Current members look forward to the day that hikers will be able to follow a continuous walking path from Lake Fort Smith State Park to St. Louis.
ADOPT A TRAIL
With the Ozark Highlands Trail broken down into individual 2- to 4-mile sections, members can “adopt” stretches of the trail that are conveniently close to their homes. Trail-adopting members commit to working to clear and maintain their sections at least twice a year.
For problem areas that a trail maintainer cannot handle alone, the association can bring in a team of volunteers during its monthly work trips. Such jobs normally involve big reroutes, large trees down across the trail or serious erosion.
I recently joined a crew on one of these monthly work trips and, lucky me, I happened to pick one that included all of the above.
Steven Parker of West Fork, a lawyer whose firm is WWC Law, is currently the club’s maintenance coordinator. He arranged for volunteers to gather at the Ozone campground on Arkansas 21 just north of the town of Ozone. Parker replaced Roy Senyard of Fayetteville in August when Senyard stepped down after 12 years of service (full disclosure: Senyard had replaced me).
HISTORIC CAMP
I arrived early because the campground is on the site of the 1935 Civilian Conservation Corps Camp in Ozone, and I wanted to explore the historic camp, which had recently received a face-lift. Not only had years of dense shrubs and other vegetation been cleared away from the ruins, but a walking trail was added.
The foundations for the recreation hall, kitchen, latrines, barracks and mess hall are now open for visitors, and each site has an interpretive sign with interesting stories related to that facility.
I was drawn to an old, empty goldfish pond built in the shape of the state of Arkansas and framed with native stones. The great condition of the rock work validated a nearby sign stating, “It serves as a monument to the master craftsmanship of the Camp Ozone CCC enrollees.”
When I returned from my exploration of the camp, the last of the trail volunteers were arriving. The head count showed 11 hardy Ozark Highlands Trail Association members had turned out to work on the trail.
Parker called everyone around him to recite a long safety-related talk about the proper use of our tools, awareness of the location of other workers, etc. These volunteers had all heard the talk before, if not from Parker then from Senyard. (I had given the same lecture myself when I was maintenance coordinator.) But it is always a wise move to reinforce safety at the start of each outing.
After this, everyone loaded into their vehicles to drive to the trail crossing on Moonhull Mountain Road, our destination for the day.
DIVIDE AND CONQUER
At the crossing, Parker broke us into two groups. One group was to work east of the crossing along Brushy Ridge, clearing several downed trees, dense stretches of undergrowth, and then do the usual smaller cleanup.
The second crew would work west of the crossing, heading down into Waterfall Hollow to clear more fallen trees, repair a 10-foot gap of collapsed trail, construct a reroute and do other minor acts of trail maintenance.
Workers selected their tools of choice from the club’s collection, and then we set off along the trail in our designated directions.
I was glad that I had been assigned to the work crew that included Bill Hignite, whose great-grandfather homesteaded the area in 1885.
The Hignite clan has been a big influence in the area, as is evidenced by mapped sites bearing their name, such as Hignite Hollow and Hignite Gap, the latter being where Bill’s great-grandfather, Tom Hignite, once operated a general store. I was looking forward to learning some history as we labored together on the trail.
And Hignite did not disappoint me. While we hiked to our first task, he explained the origin of the name of the very mountain we were striding along.
He and his wife, Donna, had recently met a man named Cowan, who lives on Moonhull Mountain. Cowan told them that, one evening, his grandfather had been peering down into the hollow as the moon was rising, and it occurred to him that the curvature of the valley outlined by moonlight reminded him of a “moonhull” — a crescent moon.
Thus, a mountain acquired a name used to this day on topographical maps.
Bill and Donna are good examples of how the association builds relationships with the communities along the trail. They have a cabin in Ozone and, having heard of our planned work, they decided not only that Bill would lend his hand but also Donna would feed us at day’s end.
WORK IS … WORK
As Parker and I worked with chainsaws, which we had been lugging on our shoulders all morning to clear downed trees (we are qualified sawyers), the rest of our crew continued farther along the trail, deeper into Waterfall Hollow, to construct a reroute around a footbed that had washed out during recent flooding.
Once the trees had been cleared, Parker and I set out to explore our options for overcoming a long, deep gap that had opened right in the middle of the trail.
After tromping around the hillside above the hole and not finding a viable route, we decided to gather our work buddies and fill the hole with large rocks and dirt. That’s stoop labor, by the way.
There we were: a lawyer, a financial adviser, a software developer, a research and development engineer from Tyson, a computer security technician, and a biomedical instructor, lugging heavy rocks down the hillside to dump in a hole, and then swinging our Pulaski axes to dig up enough soil to spread over rocks — each of us fully aware that we would be popping ibuprofen the next day just to crawl out of bed. And loving it.
The group spirit ensured we felt the rewards of the trail that has provided everyone so much enjoyment. I’m sure our pain and suffering were nothing compared to that of the early Ozark Highlands Trail Association crew that labored with Ernst to construct the original trail.
RICH REWARDS
With all the tasks Parker had assigned us completed, we collected our tools and hiked out of the hollow. We returned to the vehicles we’d left at the Moonhull Mountain crossing and to an ice chest full of cold beer and sodas, and a long session of swapping stories and fellowship.
Hignite shared more stories that had been passed down by his great-grandparents, featuring subjects like moonshine, stills and runaway mules.
To top off this productive day, the crew visited the Hignite cabin, where we enjoyed a feast of garden-grown slow-cooked beans, liberally flavored with large chunks of locally raised ham, complemented with fresh onions and jalapenos, and accompanied by freshly homemade cornbread that had been baked in cast-iron skillets, courtesy of Donna Hignite.
Another wonderful day in the Natural State, on the Ozark Highlands Trail.
ActiveStyle on 03/14/2016