Hiking Arkansas’s Highest Point
Being in the Midwest, one may not think too much about mountains. In the region of Arkansas that we are in, there are tons of mountains! We have spent several weekends exploring and hiking around them. Our next adventure takes us to the highest elevated point in Arkansas at Mount Magazine. This adventure had us thinking deeply about snakes and had us finding the rare Arkansas Huckleberry!
Mile: 42,356
Quote of the Blog: “Walking is the perfect form of motion for a person who wants to discover true life.” - Henry David Thoreau
Song of the Blog: “Wood for the Trees” - Moontricks
Mount Magazine is only an hour and half away from Fort Smith. This made for a great day adventure over and back. We were excited to see something new, and really had no idea what we were getting into. As you drive up to the trailhead for the Mount Magazine hike, you find yourself driving along a beautiful mountain road up to The Lodge at Mount Magazine, which is situation on the southern face of the mountain with absolutely amazing views! We explored around the lodge a little bit as we were able to park our car there and walk down to the trailhead. The trail itself is called, Signal Hill. It was not a long or hard hike to the top. We walked through some dense trees, before coming into a little meadow in the forest. This was the top of Mount Magazine. No spectacular views, no mountain goats, no crazy cliffs, but it was the HIGHEST POINT in Arkansas. Sitting at 2,753 feet above sea level, we found ourselves on Signal Hill at the top of Arkansas! With some good laughs and a quick photo, we pushed back down the trail towards the car.
On our way down, we discussed adding another hike to the day. We decided on doing a trail called Bear Hallow Trail. This trail was not as maintained as the Signal Hill trail. Even the trailhead was hard to find. Nonetheless, we pushed on and enjoyed another cewe miles of hiking. As the trail progressed the forest started to take over, and the trail became covered in leaves and brush. We went from our normal hiking pace, to a snail’s pace because we were now keeping our eyes out for snakes; mainly Copperheads! The leaves and the trees were a perfect color to keep them hidden. We had a good laugh at one point, because we would not have slowed down this much if we had signs of being in Grizzly Bear territory. Shows that being in Montana for so long can make you hard in some ways, but when it comes to snakes we are SOFT! As we continued on the path, we began to see wild Blackberries growing along the trail. We began to pick them and put them in a little container to take home! It was about this time when we started talking about some of these bushes looking and feeling like huckleberry bushes. We had heard that they exist in Arkansas, but have yet to come across them. Today was our day! It was not much longer before we found a bush that had berries on it. They hadn’t completely ripened yet, but we were so excited we ate those little red hucks up! It was too bad we were too early to really enjoy them, as Huckleberry picking is one of my personal favorite things to do!
The trail ended up being kind of a wash, and lacked any good views. The forest had totally taken back over in there, but that made the hike a little more interesting that it would have been. We were slightly let down by the lack of anything fun to see from the mountain views, but we were elated to have found both wild Blackberries and Huckleberries! Bonus, we didn’t see any snakes!!!
Mount Magazine is now another peak in our bag! One that not many of our hiking friends will do, as not many of them will end up in the middle of Arkansas! This will be a memory of ours that we will enjoy and chuckle at for years to come! Living Rad is not always epic, but it is aways an adventure into uncharted territory!