Buffalo River Trail Thru Hike 2022

At the beginning of April I went down to Arkansas to hike the Buffalo River Trail (BRT) as an out and back. I wanted to challenge myself and get a taste of long distance hiking. The BRT is about 37 miles one way and follows the mountain ridges along the Buffalo River nestled in the Ozarks. My adventure lasted 5 days long, covering 75 miles in total. The trail was beautiful and diverse the entire way.

There were official campgrounds about every 6-8 miles. I had the choice of either camping there with basic amenities, or finding a spot along the trail where people had camped before for a more wilderness experience. I did both switching it up each night. The trail starts in Boxley and goes thru Ponca, Steel Creek, Kyles Landing, Erbie, Ozark, then ends in Pruitt.

I started at Steel Creek and headed towards Pruitt. Once there I turned around and headed back towards Boxley, then did another pivot to end at Steel Creek. I averaged about 15 trail miles per day.

The first few days of the trip were great weather wise, temps were in the mid 60s dropping down to mid 40s at night, and it was fairly sunny a majority of the time. The last day Mother Nature got feisty. A huge storm rolled thru the area and it was pouring rain all day until about 4pm. I pushed the most miles that day to avoid having to deal with the mass amounts of water that fell for longer than needed, as I initially planned for 6 days. My feet definitely paid the price hiking in soaked shoes for that long.

The rain made the trekking difficult, but boy was it beautiful seeing the rushing waterfalls everywhere. It also made the moss pop like no other. One section I walked thru had no leaves growing yet, but looked like a lush forest due to all the green.

All in all I had an amazing time being submersed in nature for so long. I would most definitely go back to see more of the Buffalo River, there’s so much to see in the area.