April 20-25, 2026
By Kit Williams
- Put-in at Steel Creek and took out at Maumee North, 80 river miles
- 15 participants
- Buffalo River website: https://www.nps.gov/buff/planyourvisit/paddling.htm
The Buffalo River canoe trail is a gorgeous 151 mile stretch of free flowing water located in the northwest corner of Arkansas. Most runs start at or below the town of Ponca. The multitude of take out options between Ponca and the confluence of the Buffalo and the White River allow people to run day trips or plan 2-14 day camping trips. Camping options consist of established camp grounds (camping fee), primitive campgrounds (usually free) and numerous sand bars (free). For this trip we chose to start at Steel Creek Campground, 2.7 miles downstream of Ponca and planned on taking out at Rush Landing. But due to heavy rains and wind near the end of the trip we took out early at Maumee North, a run of 80 miles in 6 days.
This was Henry and my 3rd time down the Buffalo River and each time plans were changed due to weather and water level, and this trip was no exception. Weather for the first 4 days of our trip was glorious, sunny and warm with no rain in sight. But we did pay heavy for the past few weeks of dry weather. The river level, which is rain dependent, was running about 120 cfs at Ponca, way too low to run this upper section (found out that 280 cfs or higher is considered an ample water lever). Putting in at Pruitt, 21 miles further downstream would have been a wiser thing to do.
For the first two days we scraped bottom multiple times, played bumper cars with the river rocks, hung up on sand bars, and tried desperately not to run into root balls and fallen trees stretched part way across the channel. We even had to have everyone stopped on a gravel bar and 10 people picked up each loaded canoe and walked it around the river wide obstacle. The bottom of all our boats are a lot thinner in spots and many of the river rocks are painted in bright colors from the bottoms of ours and other passing paddle crafts. On the flip side it was rather exciting and often fun paddling this challenging stretch giving everyone a chance to practice their river reading and paddling techniques knowing their poor canoe suffered every time they got it wrong. At this level the upper portion is not a beginner run…our group was made up of very experienced paddlers. A woman drowned several weeks earlier because she got caught in a strainer along this section.
A big THANK YOU to Bill Rivers and Micheal Audet in the lead boat. For the first two days until the water level came up Micheal would jump out of their boat after running a tricky section of the river and offer suggestions and encouragement to the rest of us producing a lot less carnage than would normally be expected.
The vegetation along this river was beautiful, displaying every shade of green imaginable broken up by occasional white, red, and purple flowers. There were hundreds of turtles sunning themselves, sharing rocks and branches with various water fowl. Vultures seem to be the state bird since we saw more vultures than any other birds, mainly because the song birds that raised a wall of sound every morning were so hard to spot among the green leaves. A few lucky people also spotted otters and beavers along the way.
Then on the 5th day the heavy rain did come raising the water level about 1.5 feet. We chose to spend it as a layover day at the lovely Tyler Bend campground that offered showers, a visitor center and a nice assortment of hiking trails.
We paddled out the next day after a stop at the historic Gilbert general store to buy ice cream, chips and all that bad stuff your body starts craving after a diet of freeze dried/dehydrated meals.
The Buffalo River is a delightful place to paddle and going in April allowed us to start higher up on the river and to avoid the crush of the summer crowds. It was rare we saw anyone else on the river. However I hear paddling it during the fall color change is spectacular…just another reason to come back to this amazing river!
(The following photos were contributed by numerous people on this trip.)
