Navigation Apps:
The best way to navigate is to use an app on your phone. The app I use is Gaia GPS, but you can use others too. The free version is fine. You can download a gpx file from this web site onto your app and it will show you the route and your location on the route. You do not need cell service to have it track you, BUT you must download the file into your app AND make sure you have charged your battery. It's not a bad idea to turn off your cellular signal when you are running because looking for signal uses up battery pretty quickly. If you have never used a tracking app before, I suggest you try it a couple times while doing a route you are familiar with before relying on it for navigation. You can use the app to navigate to the start, or just use these directions.
Start this run from the Lake Sylvia Day use parking area
Notes for this loop:
Most people start this run heading back down Hwy 324 the way you drove in. This is pavement for a bit more than 2 miles.
This run is half on road, half on the Ouachita trail. The OT is marked with Blue Blazes and is easy to follow.
Ouachita Trail can be grassy in the summer, so this route is not recommended in the summer. Sometimes conditions are posted on Facebook or you can just ask on the Facebook Traveller page if anyone has gone down Ouachita trail lately.
The OT also crosses the road you run on the first 9 miles. Don't turn on the OT the first place you see it if you are doing the figure 8. Go 9 miles and turn right onto the trail.
It is also highly recommended that you go up Flatside Pinnacle at the halfway point of the run. This will add more than a mile to the run, but it's a great view. To go there, go left onto the Ouachita Trail 9 miles into your run instead of right. You will do a down and back up Flatside Pinnacle. Bear left (white Blaze) at the open area you hit about 1/2 mile into the down and back, instead of continuing on the OT (blue Blaze). 1/2 mile from the end of your run, you need to bear left (white blazes) on the spur trail that goes back to the Sylvia parking lot to get back to your car.
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