Wayne County High Point Trip Report

Clark Mountain on Piedmont quadrangle

Date: March 9, 2002
Author: Hans Haustein

To reach Clark Mountain from the junction of Highways 34 and 49, go east on Highway 34 for approximately 2.4 miles to a paved drive on the north side of the road, a drive-in movie theater is passed along the way. Once the paved drive tops the hill, it becomes gravel; follow this past several houses for 0.3 mile to a building with satellite dishes around it. There is ample parking at this location.

The route to the top follows a jeep trail, so someone with 4WD and a lot of clearance could drive up. It had rained heavily the night before and the jeep trail was really rutted from the streams that flowed in its tracks. Also, about 1/2 up the mountain there were a series of ledges that would prevent most 4WDs with normal clearance from going any further. The hike to the top along the jeep trail was about 1 mile in length.

Atop the mountain there were several radio towers and small buildings. From previous a climb Mike Schwartz had mentioned the highpoint was a class 3 boulder climb, it wasn't long before I saw what he had seen. The trees were still in place from his earlier trip, so I used them to help me climb the boulder. It was pretty difficult, and the best I could do was touch the highest point on the boulder with my hand. I could have climbed on top, but I don't know if I could have gotten down without spraining or breaking something.

From the point I had climbed on the boulder my head was about level with the top of the boulder, so I balanced myself as I dug around in my hip pack for my hand level, I eventually found it. By hand-leveling from that point nothing around was higher. So I took out my GPS and took a point from the boulder: its latitude and longitude are (37.19304° N, 90.66414° W). The boulder is west southwest of the nearest radio tower and is obvious to anyone looking for it.

While I was there a placed a PVC pipe register in a nook at the base of the boulder. I back-sighted from all other boulders that could even be close in height, and all were lower. This is the most challenging highpoint in the Ozarks by far, excluding landowner issues.