Ouachita Trail (OT) – Preview

DISTANCE : 223 miles (359 km)

START : Talimena State Park, Oklahoma

FINISH : Pinnacle Mt. State Park, Arkansas

MAPS / INFO :

• Tim Ernst, Ouachita Trail Guide (2006 edition)
• Click here to see an overview map of the trail.

ROUTE / CONDITIONS :

• Well marked from start to finish.
• I will be doing this hike during the winter. A little cold at nights, but from all reports the days are often clear.

NOTES :

• I first read about the Ouachita Trail in the December, 2000 edition of Backpacker Magazine. It placed 10th amongst readers in a poll ranking the United States’ best long distance hikes.
• To be honest I hadn’t given it much thought in the years since, until that is I started kicking around the idea of a series of long walks through North America. It struck me that there was a significant geographical gap between the hikes that I will be doing on the eastern seaboard (namely the IAT, AT, SST and FT) and those that are situated out west. Enter the Ouachita Trail, a relatively lightly travelled route, which winds its way through the Ouachita mountains (reputedly a place of refuge for outlaws in the 1800’s!) of Oklahoma and Arkansas.