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The Narrows Trail at the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge is a 2.7 mile moderately trafficked there and back trail near Cache, Oklahoma. The trail follows the river along the ridge and canyon bottoms. The length of the trail depends on the level of the river. If the river is low you can scramble over the rocks past the official trail end point. In addition to hiking, there’s canyon climbing (bouldering only). According to SummitPost.org, “Narrows canyon hosts some of the best granite face and crack climbing in the midwest.”
Hiking the Narrows Trail at the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge
On our second day of hiking in the Wichita Oklahoma Mountains we decided to step up our game and try some of the harder trails in the refuge. Our first trail was the Narrows. We didn’t do much research so we had difficulties finding the trail head or even the location of the trail. After 20 minutes of driving around we figured out the trail was behind the closed gate of the Boulder Picnic area and a couple hikers telling us the trail head was an unmarked trail behind the old Boulder Cabin.
We didn’t realize this area of the refuge had no cell reception and we were pretty much blind going into the trail area. We couldn’t even pull up the AllTrails map without data. So we followed the trail. About a quarter mile in the easy trail forks off. One goes down to the river. If there isn’t any water you can explore the rock bed and do some rock hopping.
Take the other branch of the trail gets a little more difficult and goes up to the canyon ridge line. Eventually you can take the trail down to the river. At this point, we got lost and did some rock hopping until we couldn’t go any further. We didn’t get all that far but got to a section of the canyon that didn’t have any trails to continue on.
After getting to our AirBnB we looked over the trail map and realized the trail has river crossing and takes you up to Eagle Mountain (Boulder Mountain). There’s another trail connected to the Narrows and I think its the side trail that takes to top of the Eagle / Boulder Mountain . But it wasn’t marked and we missed it.
To learn more about this trail, check out Hiking Illustrated, they have a more detailed listing of the trail than we experienced.
Final Thoughts and Advice
During our visit to the Narrows Trail at the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge there were a few other families on the trail. Some were heading over to the buildering section of the trail (we didn’t know it at the time) and others were playing on the rocks.
The trail to the river isn’t all that hard. Going up the ridge has some rocks but still easy enough to get up. Going down to river gives you two options. You climb down the side of a 20 foot cliff side or follow the easy trail down to the water. Once down in the river bed, you will need to look around for more trails. We didn’t do this and didn’t finish the trail.
We did the trail in about an hour. According to AllTrails, the official trail is about an hour and twenty minutes long. But if you do some exploring, take the side trails, and take the official trail that follows the river until you run out of trail it could take you a couple of hours.
During our hike, it started out cold and gloomy but quickly changed as the mid morning sun burned off the fog and it got warm. So bring plenty of water and sun screen. It gets hot on the trail and there isn’t much shade on it. Depending on the time of year, you might want to layer or carry a jacket in your pack.
Even though we didn’t finish the trail we found some incredible views, I recommend checking out the Narrows Trail at the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge. Our next visit, we are planning to redo this trail and once we complete the trail, I will update this article or post another article about the hike.
Once you finish up the hike, you are only a few minutes away from the 40 Foot Hole. Its worth the hike. You can view the 40ft Hole via the Kite Trail.
About the Images
The first set of images were the best shots taken from my cellphone. I used my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and then edited the images in Snapseed.
The images were shot mid morning. It started cloudy and foggy with the sunny slowly burning off the clouds and fog. I had some issues getting some of the images to stay in focus. I was able to fix some of the issues in post. I used my Sony a6000 using my Sony SELP18105G E PZ 18-105mm F4 G OSS. I then edited the images with Adobe Lightroom CC and Topaz Labs Denoise AI and Topaz Labs Sharpen AI and DXO NIK Collection.
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