Rock Pile Mountain

I have been at training for 3 weeks in St. Louis and that cut into my hiking time.  Prior to training, I did hike to the top of Rock Pile Mountain in the St. Francis Mountain range on September 7th.  Here is a link to that track saved on alltrails.com  http://alltrails.com/tracks/rock-pile-mountain.  

The trail goes through the Rock Pile Wilderness area on the Mark Twain National Forest.  This 4,238 acre wilderness takes its name from a circular pile of rocks at the top of the mountain.  Here is the link to the USDA Forest Service brochure:
http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5419926.pdf

This trail starts on Little Grass mountain which is actually slightly higher than Rock Pile. You drop off Little Grass (about 300 ft) and follow a trail along the ridge tops to Rock Pile. The trail is not well marked and there are many blown down trees in the area the force to you to leave the trail and pick it back up. Be careful when you do this since there are other trails/roads in the area and you may pick up the wrong trail (I did this twice and had to "backtrack"). The top of

Rock Pile has a circular pile of rocks of unknown origin. I prefer to think this ring as made by prehistoric man for celestial ceremonies. The less romantic idea is a bunch of drunk kids decided to do this as a farce. This is suppose to be a loop trail according to all the printed literature. However, there is no loop. Once you leave the glades at the apex of Rock Pile mountain, there is a faint trail that goes west (or old overgrown road) that does lead you to a small pond. You can still see a faint road at this point going north and south. Going

north this road completely disappears. No road and no markers. You end up going cross country until you pick the road up again on the top of the ridge on the other side of of Cave Branch creek. So be sure and use you GPS to follow the road that is suppose to be there. I always bring a map and compass as backup. However, I also have an Anker high capacity battery that will charge my  iPhone multiple times to ensure I have access to GPS. The is no cellular phone service in this area once you leave the trail head. The under story is not too dense but the going is slow because of the number of blow downs and frequent checking on your bearings. This trail would be best to hike once the leaves drop. There is no vista from the top of the mountains which is somewhat anti-climatic. However, there is a large bald area with rock outcroppings.