Wakefield Wanderings

The Ouachita National Recreation Trail is a 223 mile (59 km) long hiking and backpacking trail through the Ouachita Mountains of eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas. The trail starts on the west end at Talimena State Park in eastern Oklahoma, and the east end is at Pinnacle Mountain State Park in central Arkansas. The trail is maintained by volunteers, so some stretches can be overgrown or contain obstacles at times. The highest point on the trail is 2610 ft (800 m) on Rich Mountain near the Oklahoma – Arkansas border, and the lowest point is 270 ft (82 m) at the entrance to Pinnacle Mountain State Park in central Arkansas.

Being in the south, and at low elevations, the weather becomes too hot and dry for July and August overnight hikes, so plan to hike the ONRT in spring or fall for a more pleasant experience. Water sources can completely dry up during the summer months along this trail. On the plus side, if you like solitude, this trail is just for you. It is very lightly used and is rarely close to civilization along the entire route.

The best, and perhaps only, trail guide for the ONRT is by Tim Ernst. Check him out at cloudland.net.

Jana and I recently did a backpacking hike of the first 2 sections of the ONRT in May. It was a tough hike to cover 50+ plus miles in only 3 days, and we only saw six people (a group of 2 and a group of 4) on the entire trip.

Sunday, May 17, 2009:

We left our vehicle at the Queen Wilhelmina Lodge after filling out paperwork at the reservation desk inside to let them know our trip plans. We called Jim Fite for a shuttle back to Talimena State Park in Oklahoma. We had talked to Jim some weeks back to let him know when we needed a shuttle for this backpacking trip and to make sure that he was available. We started hiking at Mile 0 on the trail around 6 PM. I was disappointed that the trail registry in the park was empty – no pencils, forms, nothing. It was my understanding that the forest service used these trail registry forms to help determine use of the trail, allocate resources, etc. We took a break for dinner around 6:50 PM after hiking about 1.6 miles. We tried a new meal for this evening: Hula Wraps. The ingredients included tortillas, tuna, cream cheese, dried pineapple, and various spices.

We continued hiking after dinner, and stopped about 8:10 PM to setup camp near mile 3.4. I really prefer to eat dinner along the trail, which keeps the strong food odors away from our tent and campsite. Although the trees did not allow for many good views out over the valley, there was a good view about mile 3. Most of the climb at the start of the trail is in the first couple of miles, so we had most of the initial climb behind us on this first evening. I was hoping for a good sleep, since I had a new Therm-A-Rest Neo Air to try out. This was a new sleeping pad for me, although Jana had one on the last trip. As I fell asleep, I watched fireflies landing on the tent, and listened to an armadillo rustling in the leaves.

Monday, May 18, 2009:

We awoke about 6:15 AM to slight daylight and a temperature of 50 F. We had breakfast – bagel, peanut butter, and coffee – and we were on the trail by 7:10 AM – not bad! We took a break near mile 4.9 at a campsite with a fire ring at 8:00 AM. We refilled our water bottles near mile 7.4 around 9:30 AM at a nice stream. Water can sometimes be a real problem on the Ouachita Trail, but we have had so much rain in the last few weeks that water was plentiful during our hike. We reached Deadman gap – and crossed the Scenic Drive highway about 10:00 AM. We stopped for lunch near mile 9.9 at 11:15 AM next to another nice stream. The overgrowth was much worse on the this (north) side of the mountain. There was a nice campsite near mile 15 where we took a short break. We had just passed four other hikers, which was the first people we had seen on the trail so far. We reached Horsethief Springs about 5:40 near mile 20. There was water, but it did not look too good. I carefully collected some, and it did not look as bad in the bottle – I had been quite careful to only get clean water when filling it. We ate one of our freeze dried meals here – Sweet and Sour chicken. Horsethief Springs is also a stop on the Skyline Drive, so there were picnic tables and pit toilets – real luxury for today!

We had hiked 16 miles so far, and Jana’s knees were pretty tired. It would have been best if we could camp here, but the mountain side was too sloped for a tent, so we decided we had to move on. We hiked a couple more miles, but the hiking, especially the descents, were painful for Jana. We took a break at a forest road, and decided to hike along the Skyline Drive for the next two miles to reach Winding Stair Campground. The Skyline Drive was still hilly, but the smooth grade was easier on the knees. We arrived at Winding Stair Campground, which would allow us to tent camp for a fee. However, we discovered that there was a very nice backpacker’s camp setup just outside the Winding Stair Campground for Ouachita Trail hikers at mile 23.7.

It had a pit toilet, but the water at the camp was turned off. We just walked a short distance to the campground next door to get water.

Note that in winter, Winding Stair Campground is closed and no water would be available at either area. The backpacker’s camp was quite nice. The view into the valley to the north was great, and it had several good tent sites and picnic tables. We were really tired after hiking 20.5 miles that day!

Tuesday, May 19, 2009:

We woke up as it started getting light around 5:40 AM this morning, so we decided to go watch the sunrise. We took our down quilt with us and walked a short distance to find a good place to sit down and enjoy the sun coming up of the hills.

We ate breakfast, washed out some clothes at Winding Stair Campground, filled up on water, and headed out around 8:00 AM. We had a moderate climb ahead of us, and then an amazing 33 switchbacks on the descent, so we where hoping that our knees would be better today. It was 8:45 AM when we reached the top at 2451 ft – the highest point so far on the Ouachita Trail. This was the location of an old fire tower, and you could still see the concrete foundation blocks on the hill. There was also a very large rock cairn constructed on the top. We took a break here, at about mile 25 – almost half way through our planned hike. We descended the other side of the mountain through the 33 switchbacks down to a saddle and nice camping area near mile 26.3 – we took a break here, since we were about to climb again. We had an early lunch around 11:00 AM near Red Spring – at mile 27.4. The spring water has so much iron that it has turned the ground all around it a bright orange. We had started to descend again and would be working our way all the way down to Big Cedar Creek and Highway 259. We had been following the Skyline Drive for all of yesterday up on top of the mountain, but today we would be dropping down into the Kiamichi River valley – far removed from the Skyline Drive along the ridge of the Ouachita Mountains. We crossed Big Cedar Creek at 12:45 PM at mile 30.3. It was definitely a wet crossing, as the creek was really flowing.

We met two other guys hiking that crossed just ahead of us. They had taken time to try to dry their shoes, but I knew it would take a long time, so we changed into dry socks and pushed on. We were hoping to go up and over Wilton Mountain, so that we could camp near the Kiamichi River tonight. That would put us ready (we hoped) to make the big climb up Rich Mountain on Wednesday – our last day. We found that Wilton Mountain was poorly blazed, very rocky, and in some places extremely overgrown. It was a lot of work to get to the top, but we made it around 5:30 PM and made another of our freeze dried meals – Chicken Stew. There was a campsite up there that would have been good, but water is not available up top – it would have to be hauled up. We continued on, down Wilton Mountain, towards the river valley below. Our knees hurt worse when descending than they did when climbing, so it was not much faster than the climb up. By 7:30 PM, we were next to the Kiamichi River at mile 39.5. We found a good campsite next to the river, so we called it a day. We had covered about 16 miles today. The cold water was very refreshing as we tried to clean some of the trail dirt off. We hung our food PCT style (an easy and secure bear bag hanging technique), and let the sound of the river lull us to sleep.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009:

We woke up around 6:00 AM to a temperature of 47 F. We ate breakfast in camp, then packed up and were on the trail by 7:15 AM. We knew that we had a big climb up Rich Mountain today, so we wanted to get an early start. We made the first crossing of the Kiamichi River at around 8:00 AM, and crossed the river for the 8th and final time around 9:30 AM. Wet shoes were unavoidable this morning. We did take a break to dry out our shoes and insoles somewhat, and to change into dry socks. We took breaks every so often during the climb, and decided to eat lunch once we had climbed half of the elevation gain for today. Lunch was at a nice saddle area at 11:20 AM near mile 45.3.

We finished the climb and reached the Oklahoma / Arkansas state line at 1:00 PM. This is the highest point on the Ouachita Trail at 2610 feet.

The weeds and brush were really thick along the top of Rich Mountain, although the grades were fairly gentle. We reached Queen Wilhelmina Lodge right at 4:00 PM – check in time! We had reserved a room, so we knew that a hot shower and good meal would be our reward at the end of this trip. We had hiked 13 miles today.

The official mileage for our trip was 51.6 miles, but with reroutes and detours around downed trees, etc. our GPS track showed that our total mileage was 54.4 miles on these two sections of the Ouachita National Recreation Trail. We made detailed notes of trail conditions, missing mile markers, and other issues along the trail. This will allow us to report to the ranger districts responsible for these trail sections as well as the Friends Of the Ouachita Trail organization that organizes volunteer trail maintenance.

We put a lot of equipment through some good testing on this trip, and I plan to have more equipment reviews coming soon. This trip was long and challenging due to the mileage, but the experience and information coming out of it will be very useful down the road. I hope that if you are near the ONRT sometime in the future, you will take the time to hike a section or two of this remote trail.

NEW… We have created a map set and trail guide for the McGee Creek Natural Scenic Recreation Area that is now available in our Store

On this backpacking trip, Jana and I wanted to see what kind of good mileage we could make, now that we had reduced our pack weights greatly. We were both in GoLite Jam2 packs, and using 2 trekking poles each. Shawn’s pack was at 16.5 lbs total – with gear and food for 4 meals. Jana’s pack was at 11 lbs. These were drastic weight reductions since our summer 2008 trip, where we both had packs over 20 lbs – actually closer to 30 lbs.

We carried 1.5 L of water each, since we had to hike over 7 miles to a campsite near the lake. Jana had newer trekking poles, fewer than 9 oz for the pair. Shawn’s poles are cheaper, and should probably be replaced, weighing in at over 22 oz for the pair. We did receive the new Thermarest Neo we ordered for Jana just before the trip. This new inflatable sleeping pad can inflate to over 2 inches, but only weighs 9 oz for the short (4 ft) version. This is only slightly more than our closed cell pads, which are just over 8 oz for a trimmed 4 ft length, but the closed cell pads are much harder to sleep on.

We took the GPS in order to track our distance very carefully. We are planning 3 nights on the Ouachita Trail in May. We intend to cover over 50 miles on that trip, so knowing our hiking speed is necessary to plan correctly.

April 9, 2009

We left the parking lot at 3:45PM, which is at 835 feet elevation. We are trying a new routine where we hike for 45 minutes or so, then take a 10 to 15 minute break. During the break, we remove our shoes and sometimes our socks to help keep our feet from getting too sweaty or damp. Damp socks and feet will cause blisters much more quickly. We used a 2 layer cool mesh sock that should allow rubbing within the sock layers rather than between our skin and the sock. So far, so good – no blisters that evening.

We hiked the Little Bugaboo trail, the South Rim trail, the North Rim trail, and finally the North Fork trail. The North Rim trail ran along a ridge on the north side of Wildcat Canyon. The elevation was around 950 to 1050 ft for most of the North Rim trail.

As we hiked west, we saw clouds building in front of us, but they ended up moving north and we did not get any rain or close lightning. Also, we saw and smelled significant smoke from the south. We were concerned about where the grass fire was located, but it seemed to be several miles south. Since we were on the north side of the lake, we felt like we were pretty well protected from it moving our way. We decided that camping close to the lake shore, but still on the north side of the lake, would provide a good buffer from the fire possibly moving our way. However, we did notice at our dinner stop that when we unrolled the tops of our packs, some small amount of ash had accumulated in the rolled top. The weather forecast called for a wind shift bringing winds more out of the north and west, rather than the south, which would push the smoke away from us. It did stay quite windy both days, with gusts to around 30 mph. Most of the hike was in tree cover, so the wind did not blow directly against us too hard. Hearing the wind through the pine tree tops was a wonderful sound.

We stopped along the North Rim trail for dinner. We heated 2 cups of water on the aluminum can stove and made freeze dried Chicken Teriyaki. Our snack earlier that afternoon had been cereal and trail mix.

Our total mileage of 7.6 miles over 4.25 hours that first afternoon gave us an overall speed of 1.8 mph. Once we left the north fork trail, we had to hike off trail through a lot of thick brush and briars and this hurt our time quite a bit. This leg of the trip broke out to be about 1 hour and 10 minutes of rest and just over 3 hours of hiking.

We did not have to camp at C2, but we put that on our permit, so we thought it would be best to camp very close to C2. On future trips, there were some considerably nicer campsites near the North Fork trail that could be used. It was dark by the time we found a place setup our tarp tent, but we were able to find a suitable tent area, although it was more sloped that we would like.

We filled a 1L bottle with water at the lake shore and added a Katadyn MicroPur MP 1 tablet. This is a new water treatment method that we are trying. One tablet will treat 1L, and the tablets are extremely lightweight. They release chlorine dioxide, which is supposed to be effective against viruses, bacteria, giardia, and cryptosporidium. The only down side is that you must wait 4 hours for them to be completely effective. In our situation, we just added it before we went to bed and let it sit all night.

Jana used the new Thermarest Neo sleeping pad, while I was still on a shortened closed cell foam pad. We used the silk liners as a bag for each of us, and then covered those with the down quilt. Temperatures got down to about 45 degrees that night, and we stayed pretty warm. The wind did pick up and start gusting, so from time to time it would blow up under the quilt. Had it gotten much colder, we would have simply put on socks or cinched up the foot area of the quilt. Jana used foam ear plugs, which really seemed to block out the loud frogs and other noises. Shawn thinks he will try that next time as well.

April 10, 2009

We woke up around 6:30, and thought about leaving camp by 7 or 7:30. We got dressed and heated water for coffee. We had some liquid instant coffee concentrate to try that morning. It was easy enough, but did not have great flavor. We plan to look at other options for our morning java juice. After coffee, we heated water to make oatmeal with raisins. After eating breakfast, we started packing our sleeping gear, other gear, and then the tent. We also needed to fill up our water bottles and treat water. Since we were going to be drinking it soon, we used our Polar Pure water treatment on water collected from the lake. Polar Pure is an iodine based product that only takes 20 minutes to work. The negatives on it are some iodine taste and a heavy bottle for the product itself. We were finally ready to start hiking around 7:55 AM. We talked about ways to improve this departure time. Possible options could be to eat a dry or non-heated breakfast or to just eat on the trail at our first rest break.

We wanted to get some extra miles in the second day. So, instead of coming back to the ranger station following the same route we took the evening before, we turned off of the Little Bugaboo trail onto the West Branch trail. We hiked the West Branch trail hoping to find another backpack campsite, but we ran out of time before we made it that far. We turned back, so that we could get some tasty Mexican food in Atoka

When hiking in the previous night, we saw a concrete structure that appeared to be the location of the spring near Box Spring camp. As we came back through this next morning, we stopped and looked at it more closely. It was a spring, and although it was flowing very slowly, it did have a concrete cistern like structure that contained 10 or more gallons of water – just an estimate. We filled another 1L bottle, and the water was very clear. We treated this with Polar Pure and then added some sugar free flavoring to mask the iodine taste.

This day’s hike covered 9.23 miles in 4.25 hours for an overall average of 2.17 mph. Combined with the day before; our overall trip average was right at 2 mph. In terrain with more elevation gain and loss, we would likely drop below 2 mph. For our May trip, we need to cover about 16 miles per day. If we hike 12 hours per day (includes taking rest breaks), then even at 1.5 mph we can cover the necessary distance.

This trip, although short, was a great test run for some new gear. It also gave us a good idea of a daily mileage rate. After returning home, we were tired, but not sore or hurting – that’s a successful backpacking trip!

Happy trails…

- Shawn

Appendix

We really put the trekking poles to use on this trip, and as we hiked, I thought a lot about how best to use them. One school of thought is to not use them at all if you pack weight is light enough. I like using the poles to push myself along, taking some of the work off of my legs and knees. Trekking pole videos I have seen show moving the pole every time the opposite foot moves. I have tried this, and it seems to add a lot of work. A good way of using the poles seemed to be to move the poles on every other step, and push slightly as the pole tip gets behind me. This seems to help propel me along as I hike. If my arms are more tired, then I can simply push less. When going uphill, I place the pole tip a little further in from of me, and push down on the pole to help pull me up the hill. When hiking downhill, I can still plant the pole tip further in front of me, but it can help ‘catch’ my body weight as I am descending. This takes a lot of abuse off of my knees. When hiking, there can be a tendency to watch the ground right in front as I hike. But in doing so, I miss a lot of great scenery. The reason we do this is to prevent us from tripping on the rocks, logs, etc. on the path. However, when using trekking poles, if I do trip, I don’t fall because the poles are helping to keep my balance. Knowing this allows me to keep my eyes looking out, further down the trail. It helps me to look more side to side and see wildlife and other wonderful things in the forest. Trekking poles are just an aid to help make the journey more enjoyable and pleasant.