Eagle Rock Loop Trail Arkansas May 2010

     Ahhhh another trip finally! I was hoping that my buddies from our last trip would be able to do a spring trip but it just wasn't in the cards for them. I wanted to get a trip in so I looked to another friend that I had discussed hiking with and he was pumped! Now where to go? I had thought about the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge again but it was already getting pretty warm. I starting planning for the Cross Timbers Trail that runs along Lake Texoma. It is a 14 mile trail so if we took it slow we could turn it into a weekend trip. Not being satisfied with a 14 mile trip we looked at other sites. My buddy Ryan talked to a employee at REI and she had just gotten back from Eagle Rock Loop Trail in Arkansas and after a little research this was right up our alley!

     Eagle Rock Loop Trail is the longest loop trail in the state of Arkansas. This is the southern part of the Ouachita National Forest. The closest city is Glenwood and the trail is a 26.8 mile loop. Skill level comes in as strenuous....well we will discuss that a little later my friends. Local contacts are Albert Pike Recreation area. Yes it might sound familiar if you watch the news. This is where 20 people lost their lives due to flash floods on Friday June 11th. We were very fortunate that our trip was 3 weeks earlier on May 22nd - 24th. We had been told by the forest service that the area flash floods very easily but I don't think they had even seen one like this. I know that I have a new perspective on flash floods and backpacking and will always keep this in the back of my mind as we camped right next to the river both nights.

Ryan at the trail head.

Yes I had this same look on the last trip when I didn't know what was ahead! mmmhahahah

     A bit of advise that we heeded from another trail report was to wear your Teva's the first 4 miles. Well I am very happy that we listened. I lost count of how many times we crossed the river over the first 4 miles of this trail. My feet looked like I was 90 years old they were so wrinkled from the water but it was not unwelcome in the 90 degree heat.

Me crossing the river - only one of many many crossing!

     Day 1 - Let me tell you friends, the air temp might have been in the low 90's but the water temp was not. I found out just how cold it was when one crossing was crotch deep! I think I looked like I had the mumps for a good 10 minutes. I lost count of how many river crossing there were but they ranged from the crotch episode to simple rock hops.

Ryan - "um I got this far without getting wet...now what!"

     One great thing about so many rock crossings is that you do not have to carry as much water so you are able to keep your load lighter. I packed in at about 25lbs and Ryan was right at 30lbs. He typically carried more water at a time. I think he might have had tiny pin holes in him as much as that boy sweats! He also carried the tent...hey that is what you get being a big guy! The trusty water filter did not let us down and we put it to a test in that heat. The climate ranged from near rain forest (everything constantly wet in the valleys) to near alpine on the peaks.

Wow look at that...wait, what we have to cross that tomorrow?

     The first 4 miles fooled us into thinking this trail was really easy. It was very flat and easy. Ahhh that changed toward the end of the first day and through the rest of the trip. We completed a little under 12 miles the first day. The last few miles were straight up and straight down. The trail developer apparently never heard of switchbacks! I will admit it right here in print, I used to grip about switchbacks. I will never do that again. When you have a 700 foot elevation gain over a short distance or even a 350 foot elevation gain over half a mile you begin to dream of switchbacks. There were a couple of sections that we would hike 20 yards and have to stop for our hearts to not beat out of our chests. Um only 8 more mountains to go and uncountable water crossings. We dropped down into the valley from that first mountain crossing and decided on a good campsite.

Home sweet home first night.

     We were 20 yards or so from the river so we could go fill up the MSR Dromedary bag so we had water to cook our dehydrated meals and to make breakfast. I was looking forward to getting settled in and relaxing. Well so much for the peace of the wilderness. We ran into two scout leaders as we came into our prospective camp site. They said they had a group of boys and another scout leader that could not continue due to severe chafing. The guys were going to get their boyscout van. They were going to hike back up a service road (pseudo road that had huge mud puddles) to a parking lot and try to catch a ride back to their van. The group of scouts entered our camp and hung out for about 3 long long long hours. We were exhausted and wanted to crash so we excused ourselves thinking they would move on down the road a bit. No such luck. The two scout leaders came back in around 9 or 9:30pm and very loudly gathered everyone up. I guess they could not have packed up their gear the previous three hours so they packed up gear, shined lights in our tent and made sure everyone in shouting distance knew what they were doing. Ok ok enough about them, except this...guys you were in black bear country...take bear precautions and hang your food!



Day 2 - We woke up to another beautiful day and made a scrumptious breakfast of oatmeal and coffee. We had to force ourselves to eat the night before knowing we needed the calories but to tired to eat, well not the next morning. Well rested I was ready to eat like a fat girl at a buffet and boy was I going to need the energy. Day two held multiple mountains. We found a great camping spot (unless your in a lightening storm) at the top of one of the mountains but we needed to make our mileage so we had to skip it. It overlooked the valley and man it would have been great!

Me close to mountain top campsite day 2

     Unfortunately pictures never do justice, I am much better looking than that! Just kidding, you can't really see in the picture how high up we are but we have some pretty good altitude. We saw two hikers on the way down about 10 mins. after this picture. They were coming up the opposite way. I thought for a few seconds we were about to be face to face with some critter as much bushwhacking noise as they were making!

     We hiked around 11 miles the second day. We fought gnats in every valley and I think I had a hundred of the darn things fly into my eyes! I would have given a good Franklin for a head net! Ryan spotted a great campsite that we snagged for the second night. It was right next to the river and was very scenic.

Ryan looking energized at campsite 2

     It was great to be so close to the water and be able to soak our dogs after a long day on the trail. The cold water was a blessing. We walked down to the water after dark for our sweet relief, we used our head laps to see, only problem was I didn't see the nice little mud bugs that happen to live in the area that we chose for a nice soak. I tell you when the first one clamped onto my toe I almost added a big brown shark to the water! We (I) decided I had enough soaking after about the 3rd or 4th time one of those little boogers clamped on.

This is right next to our campsite on Day 2

     We were too tired to build a fire so we ate supper consisting of freeze dried beef stroganoff and crawled into the tent. It seemed like a warmer night and I didn't wake up cold at 3am like I did the night before.

     Day 3 - We woke up early and grabbed another quick breakfast of oatmeal and coffee and packed our gear up for the last day. We figured the 3rd day should consist of some easy trail, ummm yeah, we were wrong. It never let up until we were back at the truck. We put our hiking boots on not realizing that 200 yards up the trail was a major water crossing that you had no choice but change back into water shoes.

It was wider than it looks. Really!

     We hiked another several miles when we came upon a beautiful area, there was a small cave and great cliffs. We saw several alligator gar swimming up stream, they would come up out of the water feeding I guess as fish came through the current.

It was beautiful!

      We still had a few river crossing left after this. I had done soooo good at the ones where we had to rock hop, well folks my luck ran out. I pushed it a little too far and tried to hop one too many times. Yep, I fell in with my hiking boots on and filled them full. Oh, only if I had take a few extra minutes to change into the Teva's! It made the last several miles rough. The terrain was too rough for the Teva's but hiking in soaking boots does not make for good foot care.

Looking at some of the area we had just hiked.

    We hiked for what seemed like another 20 miles but if you count the hike from the end of the trail to the truck it was around another 6 or 7 miles bringing the total to just under 30 miles.

I thought Ryan was going to the kiss the sign!

     I kind of laughed before this trip because you can call in once you complete the loop and they will put you name on the register and send you a patch for completing it. Well, I was not laughing at the end of the trial, I wanted my patch!

     Well my friends, until next time....happy trails!

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 See link below for pictures.

Please follow this link to see all the great pictures from this hike!

Ouachita Trail Nov. 2009

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.

Day 2
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.

Day 3
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!