Q: Accesses Middle River

[Mark]

A buddy and myself are planning a multi day trip from Eminence to Van Buren in June. We plan on really taking our time, maybe 2 days of short floats, set up camp for a couple nights, and so on, possibly staying for a week or even more. Very excited to see some new river sections.

My question: we have a couple buddies with jet boats who may be interested in joining us for a couple days throughout the trip. Are the accesses in between Eminence and Van Buren suitable for launching jet boats. I've been to Powder Mill and think I remember it being a good boat ramp. How about Roberts Field, Log Yard, and Waymeyer? Easy for jet boats to get in and out of? Good safe parking for vehicles? And accesses you wouldn't recommend, such as primarily canoe accesses, or wouldn't trust leaving a vehicle there? More concerned with them having no problem with ramps, pulling in and out of, than leaving a vehicle as we have never had our vehicles messed with on the river.

And since me and my buddy are really taking our time, and "must see" sights to explore on our down days when we are at a base camp for a full day? And as we will be loaded to the max, any obstacles in that section to be aware of and will it be easy to avoid any tricky spots by walking canoe around? I'm thinking that section will be a relatively easy float.

Thanks in advance,

Mark

[Al Agnew]

Mark, you do realize Eminence is on the Jacks Fork, about 7 miles above the Current?

Anyway, I haven't visited all the middle Current accesses recently, but I do know that there are no boat ramps at Powdermill and Logyard. Jetboat runners use them; the gravel is usually solid enough and the slope of the bar good enough to launch, but that can change with the next high water. I believe there are ramps at Two Rivers and Waymeyer but I'm not sure.. There's a good ramp at the bridge in Van Buren, and one at Big Spring.  Might be one at Roberts Field. Maybe somebody else can verify.

It's a high volume river, so if you do happen to get in trouble it can get serious, but the Current is pretty wide open between Two Rivers and Van Buren and you should have no trouble.

The only must see place off the river that I can think of is Blue Spring, which enters the river a little over a mile below Powdermill. It's a quarter mile walk up the spring branch to the spring, and it's an incredible deep blue color unlike any other spring in the Ozarks.. It's also big...9th largest in Missouri.

You could camp at Roberts Field and hike up Rocky Creek, which enters the river there. Rocky Creek is big enough to hold a few fish, but if you were energetic you could go about two miles up the creek to the ruins of Klepzig Mill, which is a pretty cool place with broken down building and a pretty shut-in. Rocky Falls, a really pretty place, is another mile and a half up the creek, but it's a whole lot easier to drive to it (it's also easy to drive to Klepzig Mill).

[slosh]

Great hike from current river to rocky falls! Take the ozark trail. Go to ozarktrail.com for moe info including detailed maps. Probably my favorite section on the trail!