Ouachita National Recreation Trail
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Ouachita National Recreation Trail is a 223 mile long, continuous hiking trail through the Ouachita Mountains of Oklahoma and Arkansas. The trail is primarily a hiking and backpacking trail, but about 2/3 of the trail are available to mountain bikers.
The trail's western end is at Talimena State Park in southwestern Oklahoma, and the eastern end is at Pinnacle Mountain State Park in central Arkansas. The first 192 miles lie within the Ouachita National Forest; the remaining 31 miles, maintained by Pinnacle Mountain State Park, traverse lands owned by timber companies and the Little Rock Municipal Water Works. (The Little Rock River Trail, currently under construction, is a paved trail that will connect the eastern terminus of the Ouachita Trail to downtown Little Rock 17 miles away.) The Friends of the Ouachita Trail is a volunteer group devoted to maintaining the trail.
While well-maintained, the trail is lightly used. In a ranking of U.S. long-distance trails on a number of criteria by Backpacker Magazine, the trail ranked third for solitude and fourth for signage.
The high point on the trail is 2610' on Rich Mountain, which straddles the Oklahoma-Arkansas state border 46 miles from the western end of the trail. The low point is 270' at the entrance to Pinnacle Mountain State Park on the eastern end of the trail.
Because of the low elevations and southern latitude, the best times to hike the trail are the early spring and late autumn; winter months are often warm enough, also. In July to September, the weather tends to be too hot to hike comfortably, and water access points tend to dry up.
