We’ve not been getting out enough of late so we grabbed a chance on Saturday to see some fall color and hike the Pees Hollow Trail at Hercules Glades Wilderness.

The Pees Hollow Trail runs north from the Hercules Tower Trailhead off of Highway 125. We hadn’t hiked this trail before and the only thing we’d been told about it was that there was a spring somewhere. We checked various maps but we couldn’t find any mention of a spring, so one of our goals for the day was to try and locate it.

On paper the Pees Hollow Trail looked to be a 5.6 mile loop with around 500 ft. of elevation.

According to our GPS & Google Earth, we ended up hiking 6 miles and climbing 894 ft. of elevation.

(starting along the western side of Pees Hollow) as the climb out of Pees Hollow on the eastern side looked a lot more gradual than the western side. This proved to be the case.

The start of the eastern side of the Pees Holler (sic) loop is clearly marked with a sign about 75 yards from the wilderness registration station just off the northern side of the trailhead parking lot.

Keep an eye out in the brush to the north of the trail at this point and you can spot some building remains and signs of an old campground.

The first two thirds of the western half of the loop has much steeper gradients than the eastern side, it also has fewer glades and is more wooded. We discovered that the trail doesn’t follow the hill contours as shown in the brochure. Instead at one spot it climbs steeply up the side of a ridge and then follows the ridge down. Off the ridge the ground looks to to be level and clear in places offering the chance of some good wild campsites. Near the trail we found a healthy looking stock pond that’s not marked on any of the official maps.

The Pees Hollow Trail doesn’t appear to be as popular with hikers as the other trails in Hercules Glades, and the western side even less so. Which means that the trail isn’t used as much making it difficult to follow in places, especially in the woodland. Once fall is in full swing and the ground is completely covered in leaves this is going to be a tricky trail to follow. The ridge ends at a very pretty creek with small falls. Exploring upstream the creek dried up after a couple of hundred yards, which makes us think this may be the location of the spring we’d been told about.

There was no indication of where rest of the truck might be, or how this bit got there.

The remaining bit of western half of the trail is a combination of woodland and overgrown lowland, the vegetation encroaches on the trail quite a lot, another indication that the trail isn’t used much.

It was dry when we went through.

The western half of the trail ends at the crossing of Brushy Creek. We know it’s called Brushy Creek because someone has kindly put up a sign.

we went straight on a short way only to find the trail petered out. Back-tracking to the Brushy Creek sign we noticed that the trail doglegged right across the creek. It’s very jumbled and confused here and the trail across the creek bed isn’t particularly clear. There was a trickle of water running in Brushy Creek and we found a nice small pool just off the trail for us to cool our feet in while we ate lunch.

Leading away from Brushy Creek the first part of the eastern half of the trail was obviously once a farm track. Once up on the glades the track is fairly easy to follow but there are a number of tracks joining and crossing the main trail. Along this part of trail we found an old set of gateposts – very Ozark in construction and

Again there was no other parts around and no indication of how it might have got there.

There is one stock pond marked on the map. It was dry and looked like it had filled in. While you are here, check on the opposite side of the trail.

While hiking the eastern side of the trail you need to keep an eye on the map to make sure you don’t accidentally follow one of the many crossing and intersecting trails. One point in particular threw me.

Had we carried straight on we would have walked around a knob until we ended up going back the direction we had come (north) only this time along the ridge to the east of Pees Hollow. We wouldn’t have been the first to make that mistake, as I’ve seen from the GPS track of at least one other hiker.

The last part of the trail runs through woodland very near and parallel to Highway 125. The trail ends with a short but fairly steep climb up to the end of Pees Hollow. The late afternoon sun in the fall colored trees provided lots of pretty photographic distractions.