Rebsamen Park Waterfalls

Last weekend was a perfect time for attempting some waterfall photography.  The conditions were perfect - cool, cloudy and slightly raining.  But alas, I was feeling lazy.  I wanted to take pictures of something, but didn't feel like making a long drive up into the Ozarks.

But lo and behold, there is a waterfall right here in Little Rock that I've read about before, and have long wanted to visit.  The waterfall is located along a gulley in Rebsamen Park, and it looked promising from the pictures I had seen. 

So I headed to Rebsamen Park, and began the short hike to the falls.  I had hoped that since the falls are in a more "urban" area, they would be easier to reach than the typical Ozarks waterfall.  I naively assumed that the falls could be reached by a short and level hike, without any of the pesky fallen trees that have marked the forests of the Ozarks after the 2009 ice storm.  That wasn't the case.

You could immediately tell that being in the middle of the state's largest city meant that the hike would be a bit different than one out in the middle of the Ozark wilderness.  To get to the gulley with the waterfall, you leave Rebsamen Park Road and follow a sewer pipe to some railroad tracks.  From the tracks you just follow the creek a short distance to the falls.  Which is much easier said than done.  The gulley around the falls is steep, and was slippery in the wet weather.  And the gulley was littered with fallen trees, which are probably the result of the Christmas Day blizzard last year.

  The falls are interesting. The creek has carved through the rocks around the falls, which are covered with a carpet of moss.



A closer look at the upper tier of the waterfall:



After slipping and sliding down the hill, and dodging a maze of fallen tree limbs, I was soon back to the car and made the short drive back home. It may not be the most scenic waterfall in the state, but it gets bonus points for only being a 15 minute drive from away.