Splatterstone and Burden Falls

Motivated by our newfound appreciation for nature portraits, we took an afternoon trip to Splatterstone Falls (aka Black Rock, aka Boulder Creek Falls, aka aka...) and the more well-known Burden Falls in the Shawnee NF.  A special treat was that Kate and her adorable dog Sadie joined us for the hike!

Some of the members of the Shawnee NF Facebook page were kind enough to provide some directions to Splatterstone as it requires some bushwhacking.  Unfortunately, I failed to upload the points correctly, so we had a bit of an adventure getting there.  I had a rough idea of where it was in the valley south of trail 1770, so we took off through the woods and down the slope.  We heard water running and stepped out into the shallow creek bed above the falls only 15 feet from the drop!  What luck!

Or so we thought.  I had seen maybe five pictures of the falls and none of them really gave me any sense of scale.  I thought it was maybe 20 feet tall.  Nope, it's a big one.  Maybe 50-70 feet tall if I had to guess.  And there was no clear way down to the bottom.  We followed the bluff line downstream until we found a rockfall to scramble down.  It was not too hard for me, but Sadie wasn't so sure about it!

The scale of the falls hit me even harder from below.  The "splatter" stone was the size of a van, not a loveseat as I had thought!  It was well worth the extra effort to find!

I prefer the first edit of the following picture and Laura prefers to see the rocks in the second edit.  What do you think?

We spent about 90 minutes doing portrait sessions of Kate and Laura (the latter featured in this post) and had the place to ourselves.  It was cool and the only bugs we saw were mudbugs (crawdads) in the creek bed.  It was a pleasant oasis.  The only negative was that Laura slipped, fell, and slid down the rock into the water while I was trying to position her for a shot.  Luckily she came out unscathed, but it was terrifying seeing it in slow motion and trying to get to her to help.  We will certainly be more careful in the future.

We tried to follow the creek out to the end of the trail, but the bluffs only got taller, so we backtracked and eventually found the rockfall that we should have taken in the first place from the suggestions.  I actually dismissed it as an option after a quick glance, thinking it looked too steep, until Laura called down from the top!  She had found a few stepping stones that I hadn't seen and she conquered the bluff.  We made it to the horse trail and made our way back out.  I added a map at the end of this post to help if you try to go to the falls.

It was about 6pm, so we cancelled any aspirations to make it to Jackson Hole Falls or Caney Falls because they both involved hikes and instead just truncated the itinerary to only the roadside Burden Falls.  We were pleasantly surprised to also have that very popular waterfall to ourselves the whole time we were there.  It was much easier to access, but did involve some scrambling, and offered plenty of options for new portrait angles.  Sadie had fun cooling off in the pools downstream.

  

We stopped at Aces in Goreville hoping for hot fried chicken, pizza, and their cool custard shakes (you can mix in anything from the food shelves in the gas station).  We had to settle for cold chicken and the remaining two slices of pizza because the kitchen was closed.  It was after 9pm on a weekday, so I don't blame them.  It was still a nice time eating outside with good company before the drive home.

If you are going to Splatterstone Falls, we would recommend the more easterly path highlighted with the red line below.  The easier (though still challenging for some) egress from the valley is the easternmost red pin below and the bottom pin is the falls: