Ouachita Trail

The Ouachita National Recreation Trail is a 222.5 mile long-distance hiking trail (actually probably > 223 miles) that runs from Talimena State Park (eastern Oklahoma) to Little Rock, Arkansas.   For the whole 223 miles the trail follows the Ouachita Mountain range, offering a wide variety of landscapes, from high mountain vistas to swampy river-bottom land.  

The first 191 or so miles are in the Ouachita National Forest.  The rest of the trail, roughly from State Hwy 9 to Pinnacle Mountain State Park runs on timber company land and Central Arkansas Water land.   According to Wikipedia, the high point is 2610 feet  (near the western end) and the low point is 270 feet (eastern end).

The definitive guidebook to the Ouachita Trail is the Ouachita Trail Guide by Tim Ernst.    The latest edition (#4) provides 133 pages of extremely detailed descriptions of every twist and turn of the trail.   It's entertaining reading from the 'trail guide master' of Arkansas and its a must-have item for any OT hiker. 

The majority of 'data' on this website is in the form of photographs and videos.   It is not my intention to provide detailed trail guides, especially for the Ouachita Trail.   I'll leave that to Tim Ernst.  Descriptions on this site are all about day hikes (including on the OT) and are mainly intended to supplement the photos/videos so that hikers can see what these places look like.

This section of the site is divided up by Ouachita Trail sections, which correspond to the trail sections in Tim Ernst's guide book.  Tim's OT 'sections' has become the "standard" for referencing parts of the Ouachita Trail.

The OT is maintained by a volunteer organization called "Friends of the Ouachita Trail". 

Look under each section (below) for dayhikes and links to photos of the OT...