April 15 – 17, 2024

After a fun two-day trip with Alex and Logan, I set out by myself for another hike around the Dolly Sods Wilderness of West Virginia.

I had 2 days of food, backpacking gear, the Scout, and no real plan. This hike would be different than my normal ones as I wasn’t trying to cover much distance, just explore the northern half of Dolly Sods.

It had rained, hard, 3 days before. I muddily entered the Wilderness from the confluence of trails on the west side of the area, and began scouting the Left Fork of Red Creek. There wasn’t much water left from a boating perspective, but I blew up and floated a mile or so of the creek down toward the confluence. Boating was slow and inefficient, with plenty of “walking the dog,” but very scenic.

This may be my first backcountry trip ever where I had no mileage goals, and I took advantage with daily naps. I also brought along a lightweight tripod that I used to frame shots for the video, above. The effort required to take advantage of a tripod is considerable, and I spent about an hour each day just getting shots with the tripod.

At the gradient increase, I was caught in a light thunderstorm and took shelter under the boat for a half hour until the rain cleared up. After drying gear, I hiked off trail for a bit. Dolly Sods is a great place to get into off-trail travel as it’s easier here than most places, and the sightlines make it more difficult to get lost. I followed some trails to the valley east of the Dobbin Grade trail, where I settled for a bivy site among a small copse of trees, using my upside-down inflated packraft to even out the ground. I don’t recommend trying to camp in a valley here, as good sites are hard to come by down in the swampish areas.

The views in this place are abundant, expansive, and beautiful. The sunset was gorgeous. I wrapped myself in the tarp for 20 minutes as it rained, then ate dinner and fell asleep watching the clouds to the sound of the birds.

Day 2

Today I wanted to explore upper Red Creek, north of the Left Fork tributary. I hiked, using a combination of on and off-trail, northward along waterway until it started to look too thin to boat. I had mixed results paddling down from here. Some sections were slow but fun, and others were slow and scrapy. It was a good experience, but I won’t try paddling in this Wilderness again unless the water is very high.

I took out when the creek entered the woods, as the slight increase in gradient thinned out the water too much to paddle.  I packed up my 7.5 lbs of rafting gear, satisfied with my exploration of the waterways in the area.

After a 30 minutes of meandering off-trail, I headed south on the Red Creek trail at about 3pm. Once the path transitioned to the Rocky Point trail, the going got much slower due to the large unstable gravel that makes up the surface here for some reason. I was glad to have GPS for the final stretch of the day, as the turn-off to go up to Lion’s Head is not at all obvious from the trail.

The pre-sunset view from Lion’s head was worth the hike out. I set up camp at 7pm and managed to sleep well through a bit of rain and some stronger winds. I made plans to catch the sunrise in the morning, and then slept soundly right through them.

I’ve always been conflicted about the Gatewood Cape. The combo of light weight, tiny packed space, and large covered living area is great for UL trips in the eastern US. But the lack of care in iterating the design, and lack of attention to detail in the construction always reminds me not to trust my life to it in more exposed areas.

Day 3

Miles to car: 6

Embarassed backpacker girls caught pooping near the trail because they didn’t hear me hiking: 2

Warning tickets on my car for parking overnight at the trailhead: 1

Miles to home: 450

My general CalTopo map of the area