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.
