Tales of the Trail: Thru-Hiking the Ozark Highlands Trail

A thru­-hike of any trail presents many challenges that most are unaware of. The most exhausting, grueling, and wearisome aspect of this brand of adventure is the mental perseverance it takes to complete such a daunting task. Sure, hiking can be physically demanding but if you don’t have the head and the heart to endure everything the trail is going to throw at you, then she will eat your lunch.

My thru-­hike of the Ozark Highlands Trail (OHT) was no exception. It was extremely demanding, in many ways, but before I get into my hike I would like to shine some light on the trail. The OHT is a very unique corridor through the Ozark Mountains. Crossing creeks, climbing mountains, and traversing ridges, the trail winds through some of Arkansas’ most remote wilderness. The pine forests and birch groves give way to spectacular waterfalls and unbelievable rock formations. The trail runs 165 miles, from Lake Ft. Smith to the Woolum Campground on the Buffalo River. To experience the Ozarks at their finest, you will find no better passage than the OHT.

I got to experience the full spectrum of the trail. I saw her in dark and in light, I saw her hot and cold, dry and wet. I saw her smooth and well blazed, I saw her rough and overgrown. I saw her for everything she was, and that’s what you get with any thru­-hike, a very intimate acquaintance.

This trip was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. I set out, not to simply hike the distance of the OHT but to set the unsupported speed record. I wanted to hike this thing, without assistance, faster than anyone had ever hiked it before. Honestly, I thought it would be a cake walk. I thought it a relatively short distance, over gradually sloped mountains, and I was not prepared for the obstacles that were to come my way.

Before I left for the trail, my roommate Dylan decided he wanted to join me. Dylan is an avid hiker, he has been through Colorado, the Smokey Mountains, and all over Arkansas; including some sections of the OHT. He cycles quite a bit and is in great shape but he’d never done anything like this before. His longest hiking trip was a forty mile section of the Continental Divide Trail and he’d never gone more than fifteen miles in a day. I had been planning and preparing for this trip for months.

I’d just hiked the entire Appalachian Trail and I knew what it took to walk fifteen to ­eighteen hours a day, day after day. I was running ten miles at a stretch, four times a week and I’d just done an endurance challenge where I ran nearly fifty continuous miles in nine and a half hours. I had been conditioning my mind and my body to thru-­hike the OHT in record time and I wasn’t sure he could keep up. Dylan assured me he’d be right there, every step of the way, and I welcomed the company but was sure he didn’t understand what he was getting in to. I knew he was going to have a difficult time but figured if he could keep his head strong, then he could accomplish it.

The first realization that this would be more difficult than expected came when we tried to find water. There are no water faucets along the trail so you have to rely on Mother Nature to provide. Typically you’d cross several running creeks a day but we hadn’t seen much rain that month and everywhere we stopped was either dry or stagnate. Dehydration is easy to come by and can hit you before you know it, the lack of water makes you sluggish and prone to injury. I started to worry that we wouldn’t find a good water source and that completing the hike would be impossible.

Having trouble finding water was the last thing I thought about before we hit the trail and it quickly became my biggest concerns. My planning did not account for long dry stretches. The first night I had us camping eight miles from any potential water source and that wasn’t going to work. So we changed the schedule, accepted that fact that we’d have to carry extra water, relied on some luck and the expedition pressed on.

Another factor I hadn’t planned for was the trail condition. For the most part the OHT is well maintained and adequately marked thanks to a group of volunteers known as the Ozark Highlands Trail Association. They are responsible for building and maintaining the trail and do a wonderful job with the resources they have, however, there were sections that needed attention (We started at the beginning of their maintenance season so by the time Spring rolls around the obstacles we encountered will be cleaned up).

Most of the leaves had fallen, covering the forest floor and occasionally we’d come to huge blowdowns we’d have to climb around, then search for the trail on the other side. The path is marked with white, rectangular pieces of metal called blazes. Sometimes blazes were missing, some far apart, making it difficult to find the way. All of these issues are standard with any trail, it’s impossible to keep something that large perfectly maintained one-hundred percent of the time, but in order to keep our schedule we were walking forty-six hours a day in the dark. We were trying to navigate all these obstacle with just the beam from our headlamps, and it was easy to get lost.

Injuries also plagued our trip. From the first day I could feel my knee slowly start complaining. I had given it a good beating on my thru­-hike of the Appalachian Trail and it hadn’t quite healed. By the end of the second day it was locking up and refusing to cooperate. I had to make frequent stops, stretch it out and continue limping. Dylan had troubles of his own. His feet were a breeding ground for blisters and I still don’t think his pinkie toe looks human. Besides his feet, his knee started acting up on the downhills and his legs were really feeling it. All together we looked like a wreck, hobbling along through the woods.

But the most taxing challenge of all was keeping our spirits up. Being cold, wet, hungry, hurt, and exhausted and knowing we had miles and miles to cover before we could rest, made it difficult to push forward. At any moment we could have quit and gone home. No one forced us to be there, we were electing to put ourselves through hell. Sometimes knowing that I could be at home in bed watching Russian YouTube videos instead of slugging through the wilderness made it near impossible to take another step. But we did. Because every step we took, every mile we walked, every night we spent in the dirt got us closer to the end.

So far, it might seem like the entire hike was a complete and miserable suck fest…and it kind of was. But there were great moments too. At the top of Hare Mountain we saw an amazing view of the Ozarks, low lying clouds resting in the valleys. Hiking onto a ridge, we were greeted with a beautiful sunrise shining through the fog and trees. One crisp night, bedded down in a small clearing, we looked up and saw an unbelievable display of stars. Besides the awesome scenery, there were small moments that lifted our spirits.

On day three we came across a jug of water sitting beside the trail. We assumed someone had left it for hikers because that section of the trail was particularly dry. We placed our trust in the goodness of others and drank the entire jug! At one of the hardest sections of the trail we found a few cans of food, either left intentionally for us or by a previous hiker who’d decided to lighten their load. Either way, we ate it and felt wonderful.

The trail is full of ups and downs, both literally and metaphorically. The real challenge is balancing the two and realizing you can’t have one without the other. The greatest moment on the trail came when the light from our headlamps reflected off a bright, yellow sign that read “Woolum,” signifying the end of our long, hard-fought battle. I looked at my watch; 6:08 p.m. As I said before, we were attempting an unsupported speed record and time meant everything. At that point, we had traveled one-hundred and sixty-five miles in four days, thirteen hours, and fifty-three minutes. We had beat the previous known time by seven days!

So why did we put ourselves through four and a half days of hell? Beating the record was wonderful but it offered only bragging rights. Was the record worth the agony? The answer is no. It wasn’t worth the grueling pain or mental burden that comes with thru­-hiking the trail at the pace we had.

But you know what is worth it? Knowing that we can do it. Knowing that we can push our bodies to their physical limits and then push them even farther. Knowing that we can withstand the pain and suffering all day, then wake up, and do it again. Knowing that we have the mental fortitude to bite down, pick up our packs, and take just one more step.

From completing something as extraordinary as this, you learn that your mind is stronger than your body will ever be, and from this knowledge, you look at every situation with a different attitude. Things seem easier and goals become more attainable. I welcome the hardships that I face with open arms because without them, I wouldn’t grow as a person. I need to be challenged so that I can find out who I truly am and what I am truly capable of. When it all boils down, I attempted to set the unsupported speed record of the Ozark Highlands Trail because I had to see if I could do it. Dylan wasn’t as prepared for this hike as I was, but once he made up his mind he stayed with me every step of the way. He was able to do it because he knew he could do it. You don’t always climb a mountain for the sake of the climb, but rather to stand on top to prove that you can.

As Sir Edmund Hillary once said, “It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.”

What trail or mountain is next on your list to conquer??