And Now [drum roll], Our Hardest Hike By Far: Clark Creek Natural Area in Woodville, MS - Monday, January 17, 2022

Of all the walks we did this weekend, I was looking forward to this one. It has waterfalls! Our start time for this walk was 9 am. We got there a little later so the temperature had a chance to warm up.

It is required to buy a parking pass at the trailhead. The $3 fee is better than paying a $10 fine. We were given a map of the natural area as our only instructions. Our route was highlighted for us on the map.

At the start kiosk, we found this lovely warning. They weren't kidding!

The trail at the start was wide and packed dirt. It looked very nice, but it was downhill which meant at the end of the walk we had to climb UP the hill.

I was by myself here. When I heard birds, 
I looked up and saw woodpeckers.

This part of the trail is along a ridge. 
The trail drops off on both sides.

This is not a trail to walk by yourself. If you get hurt, you want someone to be able to get help. So far, everything looked fine. It was about to get difficult. 

The trail still looks flat.

Susan Medlin and I decided to stay on the "Improved Trails" and only do the 5k. We still had to drive back to San Antonio this afternoon. The other 5k was shown on the map as "Primitive Trails."

We stayed on one main trail and made out-and-back trips off of it to see the waterfalls and a creek. Let me tell you, those out-and-back trails were killers: steep, no switchbacks, and long sets of wooden stairs. It's a good thing we had been exercising all weekend and building our stamina!

At the first waterfall was a wooden stairway that dropped about 25'. One of the people in our group slipped on a pile of mud on the stairs and fell down the first three or four steps. The wooden platform leveled out before dropping the rest of the way down. Thankfully, she was okay. Going down was the only way to get a good photo. I went down part of the way until I could actually see the whole waterfall. I think it was about 20' tall. 

The first
waterfall.

From there, we had to climb back out the steep, eroded hill to go back to the main trail. We were huffing and puffing. 

Once back on the main trail, we continued to the next out-and-back to the second waterfall. In the photo below, I was not ahead of this group. They had already gone down and headed back up. 

DJ Moore with a 
big smile on her face. 

At the second waterfall, the staircase was even longer!! There was no way I was going to the bottom of that one! Again, I went part way down until I could get a photo of the falls. It kind of looked like the first waterfall and was about the same height. It had more rocks at the bottom of it, though.

Definitely NOT the 
stairway to heaven.

The second waterfall.

The waterfalls here do not even have names. The map just says "1st WF," "2nd WF," etc. There are a total of six waterfalls in this natural area.

Climbing out from the 2nd waterfall.

At this point, I was really tired. I've learned from past hiking experiences that you have to leave enough gas in your tank to get back to the car. 

After getting back on the main trail and hiking another 0.14 miles to another out-and-back trail, I took serious stock of the situation. What I saw when I looked at the next side trail was a hill to hike up. From the map, I could see that this out-and-back trail was longer than the other two out-and-backs. I decided to skip it and continue on the main trail toward more waterfalls. 

The main trail at this point had less severe ups and downs. Susan Medlin and I had split up after the second waterfall. I knew she was probably on that side trail I skipped. Since our phones didn't have a signal, I asked others in our group who had hiked to the next waterfall and were headed back to the car to let Susan know that I bypassed the last side trail. 

It was going to take most of my remaining energy to reach the next waterfall and then climb back out. I kept going, but I hadn't seen anyone for a while. Finally, about 3/4 mile later, a group of people came toward me. We had a little pow-wow and I got the scoop on the rest of the trail. 

They told me that past the shelter, the trail got really steep. To get to the next waterfall would require going down another set of very steep, long stairs. Then, apparently, there was a drop at the bottom of the stairs. Some of them went down and said there wasn't much to see there and they had a hard scramble to get back up. 

All righty, then. I went past the shelter to a very steep, rutted uphill. On the way up, I got a sharp pain in one knee. That did it. I turned around right there to go back to the car. 

I ran into another group of our walkers. They had been with Susan on the last side trail. She was somewhere behind them. 

I continued back toward the car and found Susan not too much farther away. She was exhausted after that last side trail and was ready to head back to the car, too. She told me I made the right decision to skip it. There wasn't much to see and it was a long, steep climb back up to the main trail. 

We just kept putting one foot in front of the other to make our way back. If you look closely in the photo below, you can see Susan Medlin in an orange sweater up near the top. This was the last long staircase, after a bunch of steep up and downhills with no stairs.

One of the steep sets
of stairs on this hike.

Both of us were so glad to make it to the van! Now, we just had to drive home: 518 miles (about eight hours)!

It took us almost three hours to do a partial 5k which meant we weren't even starting our drive home until noon. Needless to say, we were exhausted and hungry. It was time for a peanut butter sandwich and some fruit!

We got stuck in accident traffic for about 20 minutes on I-110 in Baton Rouge. Then we took turns driving back. She dropped me off at our place about 8:30 p.m. She then had another half-hour drive to their house. 

What a weekend! We learned a lot and had some really nice walks. Many thanks to Helen Hull for all the hard work she put into developing the Louisiana Parish walks. For the past three Januarys, Susan and I have been exploring different parts of Louisiana with this group. It's always an adventure!