Day 6 – Exploring Beards Gap Hollow

Today’s Blog Entry

On Saturday Cindy and I returned to Douthat State Park for a long hike into the forest on the western side of Douthat Lake.

We parked near the White Oak Campground where we found the trailhead for Beard’s Gap Hollow and then chained together a number of trails (Locust Gap, Blue Suck Falls, Middle Mountain, and Pine Tree) before taking the Middle Hollow Trail back down to Douthat Lake. From there we walked along the lakeshore and through the rather large Camp Carson picnic area back to the truck.

It sounds a bit chaotic but the park’s trail map handout was decent and their signage very good. We hiked for about 3-1/2 hours and covered roughly 9 miles of wooded terrain with about 1,700 feet of vertical between the lake and our high point on the Middle Mountain Trail.

The highlights of the day were our continued good luck in terms of weather, the incredible blanket of mountain laurel in bloom all over the forest floor, and the unusually named Blue Suck Falls.

After our bear experience on Wednesday morning we both sported our bear bells, souvenirs from our time living in Utah and exploring remote parts of the Intermountain West. They apparently did their job as we didn’t see any bears this day (or many other people, for that matter). It was nice to know that the constant ringing in my ears was something other than tinnitus!

After a late lunch back at our campground we put on our fly gear and wandered up the trail to try the waters of Wilson Creek. This stream has yet to be stocked this year but we both had fish on and I landed a small brown trout, so that was a nice way to finish our exploration of this area.

Today’s Map

Today’s Photos