Gulf Hollow - Page Hollow - Moccasin Creek, Simpson, Arkansas 4-5-25

Описание: April 5, 2025
A rare multi-day storm outbreak brought high waters to the state of Arkansas. Steady rain Thursday and Friday had the creeks primed for an exploratory run on Saturday, after a strong storms pushed through the state. Gulf Hollow was high on my list to check out. I had hiked the main parts of the creek a year ago, and was able to find a good hike in location tucked back in the woods off Dare Mine Rd. The take out is reached at the end of Dare Mine Rd where it reaches the confluence of Indian and Moccasin creeks, making for a pretty short shuttle for a 6+ mile run. About halfway down, a road splits off towards the east. Turn here and then stay left as the road forks again. This is a 4wd only road that doesn’t get traveled often, but is not too bad. It has a nice hard bottom the whole way with no major mud holes. Follow this road up the west side of the hollow to a big clearing with a small pond near the center. We encountered a large oak tree that had just fallen across the road, and took us over half an hour to get it cut and moved to the side. A 4 wheeler trail continues down towards creek between 2 feeders. About halfway down it splits, and follow to the left going towards the feeder to the north. This trail will lead right to the top of the first slide, a long and narrow zoom flume type slide that ends in a 6 foot drop into a pool. The next slide was a little too low and manky to run. If that tree blocking the road hadn’t slowed us down we probably would have had enough water to run it. After portaging around, we scraped and portaged down the rest of the feeder to Gulf Hollow proper, where we had a healthy flow. The whole creek was pretty much one continuous bedrock flume that didn’t let up until we reached Page Hollow. Two of the highlights were a really clean 12-15 ft waterfall, and a complex slide where you had to punch a diagonal hole, go around a boulder to the right, then keep working right as the creek pushes left over a couple small ledges to avoid the wall and potholes on the left. A lot of fun rapids in there and no major hazards other than some easily avoidable undercuts and a few typical wood portages.