So, I’m starting a new section of the site and it’s going to be for trail reviews. I’m planning to review trails I’ve hiked and include some helpful info & photos to showcase what can be expected. For today’s blog post I want to talk about my experience while hiking the B.S.A. Trail on Petit Jean. My plan was to exclude the 7 Hollows part of the hike and do the 8-mile B.S.A. trail. However, I took a right instead of a left and put a 0.5-mile route in place. After hitting a mile marker and realizing my mistake I doubled back.

This turned out to be a bigger issue for me than I thought it would be when it happened. I realized I was going the wrong way and I turned around, so what’s the problem? I only went a half mile, so it’s easy enough to fix. For me, I couldn’t get past the fact that I looked at the route map, saw the road was to the left (which meant I would go across the top of 7 Hollows as planned), and still went right for some reason. What was that reason? The blue & white blaze I saw to my right.

I made a simple decision error when I saw a blue & white blaze to my right and only blue blazes to my left. I went right and started into the 7 Hollows Hike on Petit Jean State Park. Now, this hike is a great 4-mile loop that I highly recommend if adventuring at Petit Jean State Park, but this day I hadn’t planned on trying for 12-mile version of the B.S.A trail.

My high-level plan was to stop for 10 minutes every 2 miles. Because I usually average 2 mph on the trail, I anticipated finishing the 8-mile Boy Scout Trail around 4 hours. This seemed like a reasonable amount of time and it fit with an overall plan that included 2, 1-hour drives from Little Rock to Petit Jean and back.This plan also left some flexibility if I went a little further earlier in the hike.

When I was actually on the B.S.A Trail I had a great early stretch and took my first break at 4 miles. I was also averaging 2.8 mph, so I was off to a really good start. I decided to change my strategy to allow for a couple of breaks on the last leg of the trail, which would put me around the Bear Cave section and the Cedar Falls Overlook section, which has benches! However, the wrong turn killed my motivation and enthusiasm for the hike and I really struggled to get my stride back.

I can say that post-hike all of this is easy enough to rationalize. I just made a wrong turn and added a mile to a hike. However, I can say that on the trail I couldn’t seem to get over the mistake and it really did zap my energy. This was the longest single hike I’ve done to date and I was really excited about it. That simple error killed my moral and put me in a “fight to the finish” mindset for the remainder of the hike.

All of this said I did finish and I’m proud of that. I want to do the hike again and possibly try it in the opposite direction. I’m a little more experienced with the trail and all the turns, so I think I can do a better job of navigating it. I really liked the break up of the rest points and while I’m sore from teh hike, I’m super happy.

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving week and I’ll see you soon!