It’s a self-portrait – so shoot me; I like it. We were on the last lap of a three-day backpacking trip into the Piney Creek Wilderness. We came back and took another picture here in April.

The end of our backpacking trip

Overnight the wind shifted enabling it to blow down the valley and several trees came down – though none near us, we’d checked the trees near our tent quite carefully, and moved the tent earlier in the day because we didn’t like the look of one nearby tree. In the morning we had a leisurely start to the new year, and took a gamble on a trail that isn’t marked on the map to hike out – Our guess as to where the trail came out turned out to be correct, and we had a fairly easy hike of two and a half miles with a 730 foot climb back to the van, where we celebrated with a new year / end of hike beer.

Copyright © 2012 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. For Ozarks Walkabout