Ouachita National Recreation Trail – Talihina OK.
Started planning this trip with a childhood friend David, in fact he is my oldest friend. I was 3 and he was 6 when we met. We were going to go to Charions Garden in the Whicita Mountains wildlife refuge for 3 days in May but it was pushed back due to the fact he is a science teacher and had to attend a class. We pushed it back to the summer but with the thought of 100 degree heat, no shade, and more rattlesnakes than you can shake a stick at we decided to change the trip location to Davey Crockett National Forest. Well, that one didn’t work out either. Our thought process was “well it will be hotter than two possums making love in a wool sock but at least there will be shade”! Well, that one got canceled as well. Some family business came up and I can’t say that I was deeply saddened to miss camping in August in the piney woods of south east Texas where the air was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Sooo we pushed our trip back to the week of Thanksgiving. This is when we decided on the Ouachita Trail.
A little about the Ouachita Trail to set the stage. It is a 223 mile long trail that begins in Talihina Oklahoma at Talimena State Park and runs to Little Rock Arkansas. There is a great trail guide book written by Tim Ernst if you are interested. It gives invaluable information.
In July the family and myself had taken a little trip down to Cozumel for a vacation. While we were there we met a family that was pretty compatible with ours (I think they were eyeballing us from the beginning to watch their kids while they went scuba diving) and our kids played well together. Long story short, we stayed friends even so they are from Oklahoma and we invited Mike to go as well since we have the same backpacking/outdoor interests.
Ok, so lets’ get to the good, bad, and ugly details. First let me pass on a little advice, if a professional hiker writes that a certain part of the trail is difficult the translation for us amateurs is it could very well kick your hiney! According to Mr. Ernst (remember the gentleman that wrote the trail guide as listed above), the Oklahoma section of the trail is the most difficult portion, well I dang sure believe him! Our plan of action consisted of Dave driving up Friday night to Denton, we would rise at 5 A.M. and be on the road by 6 A.M. to meet Mike at the state park by 11 at the latest. We actually made it early and we strapped on our 40 LB packs and hit the trail by 10:50 A.M. on Sat. 11/21.
What you look like before you know how hard the trail is! I had documented how many miles it was to areas that contained water as we would not be able to carry enough water for 5 days so we would need to filter our water from streams. This was very important the first day as we had lost time due to the drive and the sun would set around 6 which means we needed to be to a camping spot by 4:30 P.M. at the latest. The first guaranteed area of water was at mile 7.3. This would not have been as challenging if we would have been on easier terrain. Now I am sure there are some out there that this would not have been as challenging for and if we had trained a little harder and maybe packed a little less it would have been easier but hey, it’s all about surviving so that you can learn a lesson. I started the day out with only two hours of sleep and not feeling as well as I had hoped. Now, pig flu, camel flu or whatever was not going to stop me as I had been planning this all year!The trail consisted of softball sized rocks that were covered in leaves in many places and it seems that we were always headed up hill or downhill during the first 2 miles.
Ankle brake alley.
I would call mile 3 moderate in difficulty. Now my affectionate name for mile 4 – 6 was ankle break ally. If you plan on hiking this trail than a pair of trekking poles are worth their weight in gold. I truly believe that one of us would have broken an ankle or done a perfect Olympic qualifying face plant down the side of the mountain if it was not for these staffs of life!
We saw several nice camp spots along the way where those before us had camped but they were not close to water so we pushed on to mile 7.3 where the life giving fluid bubbled from the ground. Our campsite was probably less than a tenth of a mile from the stream but up on a ridge so that we would be warmer.
Home Sweet Home - Base camp
David and myself filtering our water.
Our original intentions were to do an “out and back” trip and to pack up each morning and hike further down the trail. I was severely exhausted by the time we reached a camping spot the first night and had chills so I was probably running a fever. We resupplied our hydration bladders, re-hydrated our de-hydrated food for supper and I was in my sleeping bag with two Nyquil liquicaps on board by 6:30 P.M. I believe I woke myself approximately 5 mins. Later with a roaring snore or we had just been attacked by a bear! We woke to a wild dog barking and howling around 1 A.M. and then somewhere around 4 A.M. we either heard a howler monkey or somebody was messin with sasquatch because I have never heard a screech like that before. This concerned me for approx. 3.4 seconds and I was asleep again.
We woke up around 7:30 A.M. on Sunday morning and made some rocket fuel (coffee) and I had a bowl of oatmeal. I felt much better than the night before. I had a chest cough the whole trip but I never felt as bad as I did the first night. We made the strategic decision to keep our current camp as base camp versus packing up and hiking further down the trail. We would do day hikes from here since we had a ready water supply and a fairly decent campsite. We had crossed a trail leading down to Bohannon lake day 1 so we decided to explore it on day 2.
Bohannon Lake in the distance (the little shiny area)
As you can see there was quite a loss of elevation on the way to the lake.
I would guess it was 2-3 miles to the lake. We encountered a couple of hunters close to the lake (hence the blaze orange beanie and bandanna) and there is a nice boy scout camp by the lake, kind of reminded me of Camp Crystal Lake
There was no one around the camp so we laid on picnic tables and enjoyed the breeze off of the lake waiting on Jason to pop up. We headed back toward camp for a 2-3 mile return uphill. We made another hardy meal of dehydrated scrumptiousness
David and Mike in our kitchen.We hit the sack for a little reading around 7:30 P.M. after setting around a good fire.
We were up around 7 A.M. on day three and I followed my typical morning routine of 1 cup jetfuel and one bowl of oatmeal.
We hiked to Deadmans gap at mile 8. You cross a small road and then you start hitting some very steep switchbacks. This was very challenging. We encountered a small wooden bridge between mile 9 and 10 I believe. David’s ankles were bothering him by this point so he hung back to investigate the fungus among us and different rock formations. Mike and I continued the adventure. We were lulled into a false sense of relief from mile 10 to 11, we covered it in about 25 minutes. Around mile 11 we encountered some picturesque waterfalls.
Now, mile 11 to 12 was probably the most difficult due to the severe incline for the whole mile and crossing boulder fields where you had to search for the blue blazes to follow the trail.
Small boulder field, follow blue blazes to find trail.
We headed back to the bridge we had left David at to have lunch. We missed Dave by about 30 mins. He scratched a message on a rock letting us know so we sat down for a little PB and tortilla!
After a good lunch we headed back, cursed the switchbacks and filled our loving hydration packs with crystal clear filtered goodness.
We tied out the guilines for the rainflys as there was a 40 percent of rain starting at 4am. We were in the tents by 8:30 P.M. The storms rolled in around 1 A.M. and we encountered a cats and dogs downpour starting around 1:55 A.M. This went on for a few hours and we could hear the water rushing by in the drainages that ran near our campsite. The halfdome 2 HC worked like a champ and we were bone dry.
Day 4
Due to the difficulty of the trail and the fact that we needed to get on the road at a decent time on Wed. so we could be with our families on Thursday (or we might risk living like this permanently) we hiked back the 7 miles to the state park where we would camp the last night. This day was the coldest day and we encountered some very stiff winds as we hiked around the ridges. Now I must confess, I had images of cheeseburgers dancing in my head like a 5 year old dreaming of a new bicycle on Christmas eve. I wanted to get a nice big double meat double cheese and roll in it. Let’s face it, you can live off of beef jerky, peanut butter and dehydrated meals but a man can love a cheeseburger!
We set up camp late that afternoon and then drove to Talihina to find some grub. We ended up at a little heavenly place called Pam’s Hateful Hussy Diner where we all promptly ordered the burger of our dreams and ate like ravenous wolves; I think I heard Mike howl mid-way through his evening delight.
We drove through part of the scenic byway with gurgling stomachs of happiness.
The last night it was around 30 degrees, we hit the sack around 8:30 P.M. after another good fire. Ahh good thing we brought our 20 degree bags so that we were nice and toasty.
Yes, you guessed it, we hit the diner again in the morning about 7:30 A.M. for a great breakfast. We returned to the campground to pack and head home to enjoy Thanksgiving with our families.
The trail was difficult but I could not have gone with a better group of guys. We hiked approx. 30 miles total on this trip. I can’t wait until our next trip. We can apply our lessons learned, research backpacking light techniques, and pick another great trail to hit.
Thank you to my wonderful wife Stacey who watched the kids and got all of the Thanksgiving supplies together while I was roughing it in the back country.
You can view pictures from the trip on the slide show on my main blog page.
Until next time, happy trails!
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