Queen Wilhelmina to Basecamp

We blew out of Micah's place relatively early in the morning to make the drive to the Queen Wilhelmina Lodge, located in the Ouachita Mountains near the Oklahoma/Arkansas border.  It's a chilly morning due to the lingering cold front, and the forest is in sad shape, a result of the heat wave and drought that this area has suffered. 

We head east on the Ouachita National Trail from the lodge.  The trail is in horrible condition.  It looks like we're probably the first hikers who have been on it in a while.  The first couple of miles are poorly blazed, overgrown with nasty thorns that cut us all to hell, and the trail is virtually non-existent in spots.  Just before crossing over to the north side of Rich Mountain, however, we got a great view of the southern side of the Ouachitas and the Kiamichi River Valley to the north and east.  Photos will eventually make it to the backpacking section.

Things become increasingly better on the north side.  The trail improves and the vegetation is not nearly so bad.  We begin a steep descent, roughly 1000 feet, into the valley.  We note an interesting campsite along the way -- no water in the nearby stream -- which is near a wall that has been constructed from loose rock.  No idea why this is here or who did it.

We cross a highway near a trail access point, and are pleased to find water in the Ouachita River -- sort of.  There's a pool maybe 2 feet by 5 feet.  That's it.  A river that normally would be flowing has a small pool of water.  Because we've taken such a pounding on the crappy trail -- and are out of shape for this kind of hiking -- we decide to cut back on our hike slightly as we have our lunch (ramen -- yummy!).  We are debating whether or not to camp near the water when three other backpackers come up on us.  They tell us they've had water problems as well, and that Horsethief Springs (on the OK side) was nearly dry.  This is really shocking.  What a nasty drought.  We do some mutual bitching about the sorry state of the trail from Queen Wilhelmina the first few miles, and they move on.  We are debating camping here when they return and decide to camp here.  So we decide to move on, at least to try and make Eagle Gap (a total hike of around 8 miles -- which may not sound like much, but this is vicious trail).  I'm in no mood to see people on my first night out.

We have a TOUGH uphill climb -- maybe elevation change of 500 feet, pass the trail to Black Fork Mountain (noting this for day hikes) and soon come upon a place that just cries "base camp!"  I hike on down to Eagle Gap to check it out -- and it's virtually dry (a pool of brackish water that look like something from a sewer) and no great places to camp, so we decide to go with the current location as basecamp (about 1/2 mile up from Eagle Gap).  Unfortunately, no water, so we'll have to haul it.  We get camp set up as we're losing sunlight, manage to have dinner, get things bear bagged, and crash.  It's damn cold and damn windy!

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