After Dead Man's Gap, I didn't see a single person on the trail until the very end of Day 2. What this means for the trail is that it is less traveled (really from Dead Man's Gap to Holson Valley Shelter, but the stretch between Rock Garden Shelter and Holson Valley Shelter doesn't come until Day 2) it's more difficult to discern the path on the ground, and it has evidently been some time since the blazes on that section of the trail have been redone. There were a number of moments where I found that I had gone off trail (you can tell fairly quickly because the ground is much softer and there are shrubs or other obstacles in your way). I was able to backtrack, find the previous blaze, or the point at which I had stepped off trail, then scan around and guess where the trail continued. Fortunately, my guesses were good enough to lead me to another blaze eventually.
On this trip I observed a number of ways that painted trail blazes are degraded. Some blazes are destroyed by woodpeckers. Some succumb to moss or lichens. Some blazes are lost because the tree they were on has died and fallen. In some cases, the bark was chipped off and what used to be a blaze lies in chips and fragments on the ground. The OT is a long trail and keeping it in good condition takes a lot of work. Shout out to FoOT (Friends of the Ouachita Trail), a non-profit organization that works to maintain and advocate for the Ouachita Trail. I have made a donation to FoOT to support their work. There is no fee for hiking the OT, so I wanted to help donate. I also want to help do some volunteer work to maintain the trail in the future.
Another item to note about the hike on that first day was that there were two natural sources of water to be found. The first one was so near the beginning of the trip that I didn't need it. I had filled up before hitting the trail at Talimena. The second one was a bit before Rock Garden (must have been just before the sun set because I remember filtering in daylight). It was also a source that I didn't see on my FarOut app. I drank what I could while I was there and filled to capacity so I would have enough for the night and the next day. My carry capacity on this trip was 4.75 liters.
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| Dinner Day 1 |
When I reached the shelter, there were no other hikers staying the night. I started prepping my dinner and while my meal was rehydrating, I got my bed ready. The forecast for that night had the low temperature around 26°F, so I knew I was going to have to sleep with my filter and water. The Sawyer Squeeze filters by pushing the water through small fibers. If the filter freezes, it can create gaps and channels and it becomes compromised. A frozen filter is no longer a reliable filter even after it thaws. You put it into a ziplock and throw it in the footbox of your sleeping bag or quilt.
In addition to the filter, I slept with my 2 water bottles and my 2 liter water bladder that is used to collect dirty water to filter. With all those items as well as my battery bank and phone in my quilt, I was ready for bed at around 7 pm.
Nature called around 9pm. When I was trying to get up out of my sleeping setup, I heard a sound that barely registered in my consciousness. My quilt fastens to the air mattress (sleeping pad) with elastic straps and I think I assumed one of the straps caught on something and snapped back on the pad. When I returned, however, the pad had almost completely deflated. This was around 9:30 pm. I tried to see if the pad would hold air if I inflated it again, but it would not retain any air. I wasn't sure exactly what to do at this point. I was hoping that the thin insulation in the pad, being off the ground inside the wooden shelter, and also having a 1/8 inch foam pad beneath my inflatable sleeping pad would be enough to keep me warm. My quilt is rated to 20° F. This would be a true test of that rating. It was my first time camping in sub-freezing temperatures.
Data
The exact time I started my GPS tracking on my Garmin InReach Mini 2 that day was 1:41 pm. I went 9.4 miles in 4 hours and 24 minutes. My pace was just a hair over 2 mph on the trail. That includes one stop for water, so not bad.
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| The map and elevation profile for Day 1 |
One thing to note about the above chart. The mileage isn't accurate. The Garmin only pings my location every 30 minutes (to preserve battery life), so when the trail zigs and zags over switchbacks going up and down the mountains, the tracker connects the dots in a straight line. I still find it interesting to look at the elevation here, and the duration of the hike is accurate. To get the pace figure, I have taken the duration that was clocked on my tracker and the mileage from the trail (...which is also not perfect, but better than what the tracker shows, which will always be lower than the real miles because it flattens the trail).
Day 2: Monday 27 Nov 2023
Obviously, I survived the night. It wasn't the most comfortable sleep I have had, being on a wood floor with a thin foam pad covered with a plastic deflated mattress, but I got through. The down quilt and my down puffy jacket were both key. Once the wood floor was warmed with my body heat beneath me, it wasn't so bad. My backpacking quilt (UGQ Bandit) kept my body and legs toasty warm.
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| Just after breakfast at Rock Garden. Dawn is breaking. |
In the morning, I began to break camp, but while I was doing that, I tried to figure out if I could repair or replace my broken pad. I somehow got it in my head that the pad had burst on a seam. I don't know exactly why that was the first possibility that occurred to me, but I guess I was just thinking that if I moved to stand and my body weight caused the pad to fail, it must have failed at the seam. I wasn't able to find a hole nor anywhere that the seam had failed in the dark, so I started working on a plan to replace it. More cold nights would be coming up, and I also didn't want to sleep on hard shelter floors or the hard ground in my tent. My first attempt to find a replacement was to see if I could get Amazon to ship it to my first resupply location at Queen Wilhelmina State Park. Unfortunately, Amazon could not deliver in time for me to get it there. I knew I had a spare pad at home. My wife had to go to work, but she was able to grab it from my gear closet and put it in our garage on top of my car. I then found an amazing friend who was willing to drive my pad out to an intersection of the trail with a road, all the way out in Oklahoma (I sent him some compensation for his trouble).
Having found a resolution to my sleeping pad issue, I made breakfast, then finished packing up. The sun was up, so before I packed away my pad, I spread it out on a picnic table at the shelter. When I put a little air into it, I could see that there was about a 1 inch hole, not along the seam, but smack in the middle top of the pad. Knowing that, what I now believe happened was that I must have pressed on a plastic clip on top of my CNOC water bag, accidentally when I was getting out of "bed", which punctured the pad. I have never had to repair a puncture, and I wasn't confident I could do it on trail. I also couldn't find my pocket knife that morning. I thought I had looked for it in all of the places I thought I could have put it. I then thought I might have dropped it somewhere around the shelter. I had used it the night before and/or that morning to open packages for my meals, but it was nowhere to be found. Without the knife, I had no way to make clean cuts on my patch.
So, I headed out on the trail. Between Rock Garden Shelter and Holson Valley Shelter, the trail markings were sketchy again. It was difficult in a few places to find the trail, even in the daylight. I had started a bit later than I normally might, due to the sleeping pad issues, so it was almost noon by the time I reached Holson Valley Shelter. I stopped there to eat my lunch.
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| Holson Valley Shelter Lunch break |
After lunch, I continued on the trail. The trail blazes after Holson Valley were more recently refreshed. The trail was much easier to follow. That was helpful. But two other issues loomed over that next section; the lack of water sources and the difficult trail. There was only one source of water between the Holson Valley Shelter and Winding Stair Shelter, where I planned to spend my second night. That source was shortly after Holson Valley Shelter. I stopped there to filter, fill up, and hydrate. I think I drank about 1.5 liters or more and filled up all my water bottles. Looking ahead at the map on the FarOut app, I saw what appeared to be another reliable water source. Unfortunately, it was a somewhat infamous water source called "Horse Thief Spring". The spring there doesn't really flow when it's dry and what is left is a nasty stagnant pool of super iron rich water that tastes bad, even after you filter it.
I decided to pass by, hoping there would be another better source down the road ...but there was no water to be found. I think it was possibly around mile 23 that I realized I was going to be in trouble if I didn't find water somewhere. There is a trail shuttle person, named Mike, who I knew has sometimes assisted hikers in this situation by bringing water. I gave him a call to see if he could drop some water for me at the Winding Stair trailhead. This is also where my friend had stashed my spare sleeping pad.
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| Just before Winding Stair Shelter. 200 miles to go. |
Mike, the shuttle guy told me that he had just dropped water at that spot in responding to a similar call from some other hikers in the same situation. Mike had cached a gallon or two of water, plus a handful of water bottles. I hydrated and filled up from the gallon. I tried not to take it all, but I ended up taking most of it. Mike told me that there would be three women hikers ahead of me at the shelter when I got there. The hike to the top was a relatively easy slope up what used to be a road. As I approached the shelter, I was hailed with a gasp and exclamation "A human person! Hello!" I said hi. Someone else asked if I was going to stay in the shelter. I said, yes if they would have me. They seemed glad to have the company.
As it turns out, this trio of lady hikers had started a day before me. They were doing shorter mileage days, going from shelter to shelter. My plan (except on the half days) was to roughly go to every other shelter, doing between 14 and 21 miles each day.
They asked how much room I needed in the shelter. I told them a small corner would be fine. It turns out that they had a two person tent and a hammock setup inside the shelter. Even so, there was room for me on the side against the wall.
The Dynamic Trio had a different style of camping and hiking than me (more elaborate meals, they built a fire, they were hiking fewer miles each day, etc), but they were welcoming. They told me that their previous night was spent at Holson Valley Shelter, which, in spite of its name, is seated at the top of a mountain ridge. Their night was not only cold, but extremely windy and they struggled to stay warm there.
Hiker Toe
I will spare you photos, but my toes took a serious beating on the trail this day and the day before. In particular, my second toe (index toe?) on both feet had become extremely bruised and battered. I was developing something known as "hiker toe" or "trail toe". In hindsight, I probably should have stopped at some point and attempted to put some protection on those toes when I realized they were getting banged up. I don't know if it's true for everyone this happens to, but for me, the cause was steep downhill slopes that were rocky. The trail was also covered with the fall leaves, so sometimes the rocks beneath couldn't be seen. Even if I knew they were there, it's difficult to know where and how to step. Sometimes you can see the rock, but when you step on a rock you think will stay in place, either your foot slips or the rock rolls and your foot slides forward and your toe hits the next rock(s) in front of the one you were trying to step on. Repeat this over the course of a ten hour day on the trail over 15 or more miles, and eventually your toes say "enough!"
I discussed my toe issues with the other hikers that night at camp. They encouraged me to bandage them before setting out the next day. Did I listen?
Data
Because of the sleeping pad issue, I got a later start than usual on Day 2. I hiked 15.9 miles and my pace was 1.85 mph. This includes stops for lunch, a couple of phone calls, and dealing with water issues. It was a challenging day. Here is the elevation profile.
Day 3: Tuesday 28 Nov 2023
I started Day 3 early. I woke up around 5 am. After watering an accommodating tree, I got my food bag down from the tree where I hung it the previous night and started boiling water for my breakfast. After adding the hot water to the dehydrated meal bag, I began to pack up. I ate, finished loading up, then I headed back to the trail. The ladies at the shelter were moving as I was leaving, but I don't think they were nearly ready to hit the trail. My time of departure was 7:41 am. I was still later than I intended, but I was off earlier than the previous day.
Out of the gate, I had a big descent down from the mountain where Winding Stair shelter is located. I needed water because all the water I had was from the water cache Mike had left the previous evening. There were two sources coming up on the trail; Red Spring at mile 28.4 and Big Cedar Creek at mile 29.9.
The Red Spring was called red because of the high iron content. The spring flows out of a pipe there and there was so much iron build up at the end of the pipe that merely bumping the pipe filled my collection bag with rusty sediment. This would not do. For that reason, I decided to hike on and get water at Big Cedar Creek.
Big Cedar Creek was lovely and flowing water. I decided to take a longer break at this point and make an early lunch out of it. It was around 10:30 am, I was a little hungry, and I figured I could "camel up" while I was at this good water source. In addition to filling my two 1-liter bottles and my 750 ml bottle, I drank nearly 2 liters of water while I was there.
After that, I passed through the valley between Winding Stair and Wilton Mountain. Wilton is not the highest mountain on the trail, but I found it extremely taxing. The trail just seemed to endlessly go up for miles. Winding Stair has higher elevation, but you begin from a much higher elevation. The climb up Wilton (just after the Pashube shelter) starts about 500 feet lower than the climb up to Winding Stair shelter.
Mrs. Gavagai was watching my progress on the trail that day and she noted the fact that I was moving more slowly than normal. I think this was the most challenging climb of any hike I have ever done.
Another thing I realized on this day was the fact that as nice as the FarOut app is for navigating on the trail and providing information about things like water sources, it's not 100% reliable. The app uses symbols for water sources that are supposed to indicate if a water source is reliable or only seasonal. A full drop of water is supposed to mean, you should be able to find water there year round. A half drop symbol means it's seasonal, so if it's been dry (like when I was passing through this section), those seasonal locations may be dry or unusable because they are just muddy stagnant puddles.
What I discovered on this day was that some sources may have had water, but they were nasty ponds in the forest with no outlet, or iron rich springs, or sometimes, the supposed year round creek or river, was in fact completely bone dry. Looking ahead at the map was not sufficient. One nice feature on the app is that other users can leave comments about what they found when they were at that site. Their comments are dated, so you know how recent (or not) that hiker was at that location. This is helpful information, but it takes an extra click or two.
Climbing Wilton Mountain and descending back down depleted my water supply. The Kiamichi River was on the other side. I missed the first source of that river because the trail didn't actually contact the river. It was off to the side. I saw on the map, that there were two other places were the trail actually crossed the river, so I pressed on.
The second location was dry. It was apparently just a tributary to the Kiamichi and the only water was in a couple of muddy puddles. I pressed on again. Fortunately, the third location had plenty of water. I was exhausted from the hard day and, although I had not made it all the way to State Line shelter as I had hoped, I decided to make camp next to the river for the night. There was a campsite just above the river on a high bank. After I rehydrated, I pitched my tent, ate dinner, and crashed for the night next to the peaceful babbling Kiamichi River.
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| Kiamichi tent site |
Data
I hiked 15.7 miles in 8 hours and 50 minutes on Day 3 at a pace of 1.78 mph. By the end of the day I was completely spent. In addition to the fatigue of the hard trail, I was also carrying extra weight because of the two sleeping pads. The spare pad added 2 lbs to my carry weight.
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| 5451 feet of climbing elevation that day. That's a lot. |
Seeing that 5451 feet of climbing elevation made me curious, so I looked. On the hardest day on my Eagle Rock Loop trip where I hike up and over 6 mountain ridges in one day, my climbing elevation was 2852. At the time, I felt like that was a big challenge and I also thought it was a good preparation for this trip. It just goes to show how there are mountains, and then there are mountains. Haha.
And obviously, nothing in the Ouachita Mountains compares in size or scale to the Smokies or the Rockies, but these are the mountains we have in our backyard.
Day 4: Wednesday 29 Nov 2023
On Day 4, I woke up early. if memory serves me, I had a decent night of sleep that night. The temperatures were a bit colder than I had seen in the forecast. I suspect it was because I was camped in the river valley, but I slept with my filter in my quilt, so it didn't freeze. I was curious to see if any of my water would freeze, so I kept one bottle inside my quilt, one inside the tent, and one outside the tent. None of my waters froze over night, so it didn't get that cold. However, after breakfast, I set up my filter to gravity feed. As the water trickled down in the dirty water collection bag, ice crystals formed. There was a slush left in the bag when I finished, so it was definitely hovering just below the freezing point.
This was the last leg of my trip before getting to
Queen Wilhelmina State Park (QW). It was just under 11 miles for the day and I wanted to eat lunch in the QW restaurant. I would also cross the boundary between Oklahoma and Arkansas on this day. The trail would continue for a few miles in the Kiamichi river valley, but at mile 43.8, the trail turns north away from the river and begins to ascend uphill to get to the top of the second highest mountain in Arkansas, Rich Mountain. Even though Rich Mountain is higher than Wilton Mountain, it felt to me like the slope was less steep and that there were a number of breaks, walking ridges and saddles between peaks when you got a break from the long climb. At the top of the mountain, you reach the state boundary line and shortly after that, you pass (or stop at, if you prefer) State Line Shelter.
The trail blazes in this section were hard to follow in a couple of places and I had to pause to figure out where the trail went, but it wasn't as bad as the section on Day 2. At some point, a few days before, I got the impression that QW was only 2 miles or so after State Line Shelter. This is not the case. It might be that the easternmost boundary of the park begins at that point or near there, but the lodge, which is all I cared about, was almost 6 miles away from State Line Shelter. This was disappointing to me, but I got to the shelter, then I passed the Pioneer Cemetery. I have seen enough YouTube videos where people recount the story that is written on the plaque at the entrance to the cemetery that I didn't feel the need to see it myself. I took this quick photo without really stopping.
I reached the lodge at QW just after noon. I got checked in, got my resupply box, then went to my room where I took a shower and changed, then went down to the restaurant and ate a juicy bacon cheeseburger, fries, and I think about 4 glasses of Mountain Dew.
When I finished with lunch, I started my sink laundry to wash the nasty day clothes so they had time to dry. After that, I began to go through my resupply box and I also did an evaluation of the gear I had on hand. There were items that I had not used and was not sure I would need. I decided I would try to patch my punctured sleeping pad. If the patch worked, I would send the heavier spare home. Other items on the ship home list were two heavy paper maps of the western and central portions of the trail (these were very useful for planning the trip, but with my FarOut app and Garmin GPS device, the maps were not necessary). I shipped my sandals home as well. I had not used them on the first section of the trip. They weigh almost a pound.
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| Lodge laundry clothesline |
My sleeping pad patch appeared to be holding air after a few hours. I laid on it and it still held. I opted to ship the spare home. In all, I think I shaved about 3.5 lbs from my pack. That makes a significant difference, especially for big mileage days.
Data
Total mileage on Day 4 was 10.7. My pace was 1.94 mph, and I was on trail for a total of 5 hours and 31 minutes.
Climbing elevation, 3648'. The only time I filled my water on this day was in the morning before I started. I had water from the river near where I camped. I knew I had a climb and didn't want to carry a bunch of water up to the top of Rich Mountain. I also knew I was going to have unlimited access to water at the lodge when I reached QW. I had a little water left when I reached the lodge, so I think that decision worked out.
Addendum
After lunch and settling things at the lodge, I was getting ready to ship my extra items home, so I was at the front desk working with the staff to print the shipping label I purchased. A little after 6 pm, two hikers came through the lobby doors, looking exhausted, but relieved to have reached the lodge. "It's David! He is here! We were hoping you would still be here!" Two of the three women from the Winding Stair shelter had hiked a long hard day from Pashube Shelter, 17.6 miles to QW. Their other companion had decided to leave the trip between Winding Stair Shelter and Pashube. They were looking ahead at the weather and saw storms coming the next day, so they decided to push hard to get to the lodge.
I wasn't sure exactly how the weather or the two ladies would factor into the next leg of my trip on that night. I was still planning to head out in the morning for my next trail shelter. Over dinner, my trail friends showed me there was a chance for strong storms and even lighting in the area. They were going to stay put (known as "taking a zero day" because you're doing zero miles on the trail) and at their suggestion and the urging of Mrs. Gavagai, I resolved to also play it safe and take a day of rest.
I will continue the story of my adventure, days 5-9 soon.
Hope you enjoyed this. Thanks for stopping by.
Gavagai
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