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Category: Hike Reports
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The hunt for the elusive pictographs!

Twenty-five TrailBlazers spent this beautiful Saturday searching for pictographs at Owens Mountain bluffs, but, alas, none were to be found. Or we may have seen them but didn’t recognize them. This is a rugged protected area due to the pictographs on the bluff walls.  It is also an area frequented by rock climbers.

Our plan was to go on to Ricketts Mountain bluffs but a camper told us about Hudson Mountain bluff which has more pictographs and is also very scenic, so we decided to go there.  After following his directions and not finding the trail, we backtracked and stopped at another area.  After a steep hike down the mountain and a scramble across the boulders, we found a large overhang.  Later we were told it is called Campbell’s overhang.  But, there were no pictographs there.

After the climb back up the mountain, we were informed by a hiker that we had not gone far enough down the road to reach Hudson Mountain.  So, we drove to the end of the road, spotted a 4-wheeler trail and took off on it.  After 30 minutes of hiking, we were coming to the realization that this was not the trail we needed to be on.  By the time we got back to the cars, we decided enough was enough and called it a day.  We searched three different areas in the Ozark National Forest east of Cowell and came up empty. However, we had spent a beautiful spring day in the great outdoors doing one of our favorite activities – hiking!!