Ouachita Forest Backpacking Trip

This past Friday, I headed out for a backpacking trip with some of my friends from church. We hiked a trail in the Ouachita National Forest. I'd never backpacked before, so it was new experience for me. We headed up the Horse Thief Springs trail around 1ish on Friday afternoon. The hike was a lot of ups and downs, but mostly up. We hiked through woods with a lot of rocks and even some boulder fields that we had to cross. We made it to the top of the 2000 foot "mountain" around 6 in the afternoon. I would rate this trail as mostly unrunnable and a fairly difficult hike. It took us basically 5 hours (including breaks where we debated on which direction to go, etc.) to hike roughly 7 miles.

We camped at the top of the "mountain" near the springs. The next day we hiked back down going on different route which was much easier. We camped near Cedar Lake that night. I had enough time to get in one 3 mile run around the lake after setting up camp. I also did a little fishing. Overall a really nice trip and some decent training for WS.

Overall mileage for the two days - 16 on some pretty tough terrain. This week I plan on hitting it much harder. 54 days until WS!