Pike County Highpoint Trip Report

Hogpen Mtn - BM Hog (1,780+ ft)

Date: May 8 2004
Author: Dave Olson

Hans Haustein had agreed to guide me up his route up Hogpen Mountain. Our first problem was that his turnoff from AR highway 369 is now gated at the highway. We discussed alternatives and then went north one mile to FR 517. This is 0.3 mile north of the county line, or 0.8 mile north of the National Forest boundary.

Executive summary: Hans has now done both south(-west) side and north side. He says the north side is harder and recommends south side, even if you have to hike or mountain-bike the extra 1.3 miles of road.

The gory details: FR 517 is lower quality than Hans' south side road. Soon I came to a big water hole in the road. At this point, I put my SUV into 4WD. All the holes and stream crossings proved to have good bottoms. After 1.4 miles we agreed to start hiking. Hans, with GPS and topo map, was our navigator. We headed up hill and soon got on top - of a tiny hill that we believe is just southwest of the '9' of spot elevation "969". We went down, crossed a dry gully draining to the right, then headed up. As we neared the top Hans worried that we were heading up the 1420+ foot hill west of Hogpen Mountain and side-hilled us to the left.

We got on top. It is a rather small top. We read the register. The only other name on it was Bob Packard. We looked for the BM Hog that Jobe Wymore reported "20 feet. east of ..." - we couldn't remember what - the true top. We didn't find the BM. We headed down. When the slope started getting steeper Hans began side-hilling to the left until it eased a bit. Further down we ran into gullies. The gullies and ridges trended more left than we wanted. Hans lead us across three gullies, over three ridges and we came down left (west) of my vehicle. Hans afterwards said that he was fighting, conflicted, between what he thought was north and what his GPS said. Because of the battery he turned on the GPS only occasionally. This might have gone faster if I had lent Hans my old fashioned analog compass.

This was a three hour trip, from just before 5:00 pm to 7:45 pm. Turn-around spots on FR 517 are small, short. Hans said that he would have had to have backed his pickup down the road.