Witch Dance Horse Trail

The trailhead along the Natchez Trace Parkway

The Witch Dance Horse Trail is a series of interconnected trails amounting to 18 miles through Tombigbee National Forest in Mississippi. The trail network can be hiked in a series of loops, but aside from a photograph of a poor map on All Trails, I couldn't find any actual map of the trails.


I began my hike at the Witch Dance trailhead along the Natchez Trace Parkway and started hiking on a clockwise loop that lasted for over 2.5 hours and 9.0 miles. The trail was very poorly marked with red and blue plastic plates nailed to trees at various points on the trail. There were numerous intersections that split into as many as five different directions with no descriptive signage. I therefore relied on Google Maps and my original location to keep track of where I was and where I had to go back to.

The trail through the forest

For the most part, I stuck with the strategy of staying to the left whenever I arrived at an intersection. About four miles into the hike I reached an intersection that I turned right on and then looped back around to return to the trailhead. The terrain was overall quite boring, but the overall elevation gain was 872 feet according to my track. Most of this was going into and out of small valleys were dry stream beds were located.

A dry stream

Because of the severe drought encompassing the region, many of the trees had dropped their leaves, and there was little wildlife to see other than a few deer and an armadillo. The trail is named a horse trail because horses are allowed on it, along with hikers, although there were no signs of other hikers on the trail system. The northern part of this trail connects to the Payamatha Horse Trail, which is a 5.7-mile loop.

See my track here on All Trails or more photos here.

A small bridge on the trail

© Copyright 2017 Matthew Pintar. All rights reserved.