Red Dirt

Backpacking is occasionally just plain damn hard work, which sometimes makes it hard for me to explain my fascination with it. In April when Jeff and I hiked the Grand Canyon we had gotten ourselves in reasonable shape by several training hikes in the Ozarks and Ouachitas. If one can really call trekking through such beauty a training exercise. Out... side of the crowded coasts or someplace where it snows 13 months of the year, I cannot think of too many places in America more awe inspiring than the Ozarks. I did not want conditioning to be an issue when I hiked to one Natures masterpieces, the Grand Canyon. I usually walk and work out regularly, but with the way the job search has gone I have allowed depression to get hold of me. Those activities have gone by the way side in favor of Gilligans Island reruns. Go ahead, give me the opening premise, and I will give you the plot line. One afternoon as I lay on the couch fantasizing about Mary Ann, a wild hair floated down from the ceiling and landed inside my cerebrum. Why not through hike the Ozark Highland Trail (OHT). It runs 165 miles beginning at Lake Fort Smith and ends at the Woolum Access Area by the Buffalo National River south of Harrison, Arkansas. Backpacker Magazine rates the OHT as one of the top ten hiking trails in the country. I figured what better way to get back into shape and to break out of my depressive funk than by a stroll through the countryside. Even though Tim Ernst who wrote the trail guide to the OHT guesstimates that a hiker in great shape can do the whole trail in two weeks, I was hoping to do it in 10 days! I had underestimated how far out of shape we had gotten, especially myself. I then underestimated the toughness of the trail. The trail, for the most part is well maintained and well marked. It does, however, go over several mountains. When it is not doing this it bounds up a ridge than down to a creek before heading up another ridge. There are very few areas where the walking is level. And with it being Arkansas most of the ...Read More