Frozen Waterfalls at Hickory Canyon Natural Area, Missouri.
For Christmas, I bought a book called "60 Trails Within 60 Miles of St. Louis". One of the trails in the book has a photo of a frozen waterfall. Since we've had temps at or below zero for several days in a row, it seemed like a good time to check it out. It's only an hour south of St. Louis and a short hike from the parking lot. Sunday's temp was in the 20—30 degree range so we assumed very few people would be out hiking. We were wrong, the parking lot was completely full. We parked just off the pavement a short way down road and hiked back up to the trailhead.
The trail was gravel for a short way past the trailhead until it split left or right. The gravel stopped here and the rest of the trail was frozen dirt with large patches of ice where we had to go off-trail to keep from falling. We chose the to go right which took us along the top of the canyon to the frozen stream that feeds the larger waterfall below.
The top of the largest waterfall was directly behind me when I took this photo.
We crossed this stream and followed it up to yet another waterfall.
This was the end of this part of the trail, so we backtracked and then followed the other trail down into the box canyon. It was a steep descent in a few places but most of the trail was free of ice. I did slip one time and landed on my backside after stepping on some dead leaves that had ice underneath. No worries, though. Nothing damaged.
The downhill part of the trail was short and we soon found ourselves in the canyon and looking at some amazing ice flows. We stayed in the canyon for about an hour before heading back up to the car. It was exciting and beautiful, but our fingers were feeling frozen from taking off our gloves to take pictures. For the future, we will to have to invest in better gloves that allow us to take photos.
Overall, a very fun day, and so close to home. We will definitely be back.