Day Two of the Ouachita Trail

Imagine that you, by some bizarre accident, set up your camp at the side of an active runway at a big international airport. As you lay there in your sleeping bag try to get to sleep, big jets taxi by, engines running. Fairly often one would take off, full throttle with a deafening roar and a blast of turbulence that would shake you. Imagine this happened all night into mid morning. Well, that was my night.

Now, I wasn’t near any airports, far, far from that, but I was just below a piny ridge with the wind raking the summit with 30 to 45 mph winds all night and in to the morning. The sound of the high velocity air through those pines is very much like a jet engine. And gusts would roar down the mountain and jerk the trees my hammock was attached to. Kind of like someone shaking you away in the middle of the night. It is safe to sat, it was not the night of sleep I had expected.

I crawled out of the hammock about 7:15 AM and was on the trail an hour later. Last night I used some of my up time to figure out the fords I need to do on Saturday. As I mentioned yesterday, it’s supposed to rain on Saturday and Sunday, which are the days I’m scheduled to ford the Kaimichi River multiple times. But after further investigation, I found, that not only is it going to rain, but the temperature will be in the low 40s with windchill in the 30s. Since I will definitely be wet when ford, and with the windchill in the 30s, that is a set up for hypothermia. Not really wanting to die from hypothermia I have decided to forgo the fords and take an alternate route. This is unfortunate because I was looking forward to the Kiamichi river as it is supposed to be very scenic. I think if the temperature was considerably warmer, I would have no issue with this. Anyway, no fords on Saturday and Sunday.

My hike today continued along the northside of the ridge that I walked yesterday afternoon. It took me by the Horton Valley shelter and eventually up to Horse Thief Spring. Horse Thief Spring. Has an elaborate spring box built by the CC back in the 30s. Unfortunately the spring is very much diminished and no longer fills the structure they built for it, but it still produces water, which was a good thing because I needed some. So I filled up there.

After 8 miles on the trail, at Horse Thief Springs, I got on the road that parallels the trail and did the last 4 miles to a campground where I am camp tonight. My knees were bothering me and walking in the road is a lot easier on them than the trail. There is hardly any traffic on the road, so it was a pleasant walk. My knees thanked me for it.

Tomorrow, with the change in weather, I will continue walking the road bypassing Kiamichi river. I’m not quite sure where I’ll camp or if I’ll be able to get water along the way, but that’s just all part of the adventure.

Until tomorrow, happy trails…