Four, no, three days backpacking in Irish Wilderness, Missouri, April 2021

The above picture looks back along the spur trail from the junction with the Whites Creek Trail.

I’m heading right (West) along the North Loop of the trail. I’d better get used to this view of Missouri oak woodland because, as I found out, it isn’t going to change much for the next six or seven miles.

You would think (and I and apparently, many, many others have), that the trail goes straight on here. Not so. Look carefully and there’s the Whites Creek trail, two feet in front of the sign on the left going up the hill.

The (wrong) trail leads to a nice campsite with a view of the Eleven Point River and some old ruins, so I’m not going to complain about my navigational blunder. This was, however, the first indication that the trails on the southern loop of the White’s Creek Trail were going to be a little bit more challenging to follow.

The picture below shows the trail in the opposite direction with the spur trail to Bliss Spring on the left. The sign purports to mark the Irish Wilderness and Eleven Point Wild and Scenic River boundary – I think this is more of a virtual boundary, as according to the map, the real boundary is further east.

My original plan for today was to hike part of the southern loop of the Whites Creek Trail and stop for the night near one of the big pools that form on Whites Creek. Then I’d have an easy three or four-mile hike out on Monday – easy except that part of the trail has most of the elevation gain!

Yesterday afternoon, through the wonders of my Garmin InReach satellite communicator, I got a message from Ginger letting me know that the kids were going to descend on us for dinner Monday afternoon. Knowing that the car would be needed in Springfield to get the necessary vittles, and my help would be appreciated, I had two choices. I could either hike out a day early or make a very early start Monday so I would be home early enough to help. Irish Wilderness is 138 miles, and two-and-a-half hours from home. Five miles hiking would take three hours, so to arrive at midday, I’d need to be on the trail by six-thirty in the morning and to do that, I’d need to be up between five and five-thirty.

I didn’t like the sound of that, so I decided I’d hike the seven-and-a-half miles back to the trailhead today. In the rain. Because, as luck would have it today is forecast to be this trip’s rainy day, which was another reason why I originally only planned on going two or three miles today.

So, here I am at twenty past ten (that’s an early start for me!) on a Sunday morning, already on the trail, at the wilderness sign-in point on the spur trail leading to the Whites Creek Float Camp, making my way back to the Whites Creek Trail. It doesn’t look like the registration point has been tended to in quite a while.

Back on the Whites Creek Trail

This is fairly typical of the trail conditions I encountered. Note the (fairly) recently cut deadfalls.

At this point, it started to rain, and it carried on raining for the next four hours.