Spent 4 hours trying to find a water source on the Ozark Trail last weekend

I was hiking a stretch of the Ozark Trail near the Current River and my map showed a spring about 2 miles in. Got there and it was completely bone dry. Ended up bushwhacking downhill for almost an hour looking for anything flowing and found a tiny creek that was barely a trickle. Took me another 3 hours to filter enough water to fill my bottles because the flow was so slow. Wish I had just carried an extra liter from the start instead of trusting the map. Has anyone else had a map mark a water source that turned out to be totally gone?

2 comments

2 Comments

evan_cooper734d ago

Yeah I had a spring marked on a map once that turned out to be an old pump with the handle busted off, go figure.

max_hernandez274d ago

Found a spring on an old topo map once, drove like 40 miles out to some wash in the desert. Turned out to be a rusty pipe sticking out of the ground with a trickle of water, but the whole area smelled like sulfur so bad we couldn't even get close. @evan_cooper73 your pump thing reminds me of that time my buddy swore he found an old well on his property, dug it out, and it was just a buried septic tank. Man, map legends really do love to LIE to us.