3 days of Hammock Camping in the Rain and Solo Ultralight Backpacking in the Linville Gorge Wilderness.
For this backpacking trip, I headed down to North Carolina’s Pisgah National Forest for some hammock camping along the Linville River. The particular section of river I chose was surrounded by the Linville Gorge, the upper ridges of which stand an average of 1,400 feet above the river banks below. This terrain, combined with a dense network of unofficial trails without signage or switchbacks, and often uncrossable river, can make for some rather challenging and exciting hiking. Add in a forecast of fog and hiking in the rain, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for some true southern outdoors adventure.
Despite the rain, my mid-June temp range for this trip was relatively warm at 70° – 48° or so. This allowed me to get my backpack’s base weight down to around 9 lbs by leaving my puffy jacket, base layers, warmer hat, gloves etc at home. I simply packed a long sleeve shirt and a buff and used my rain gear for supplemental warmth at camp.
I went with a fairly minimalist hammock camping setup for this trip. There are plenty of trees and fun unofficial campsite gems to be found in the Gorge that make ideal for hammocks. Water is obviously of minimal concern for the lower regions of the gorge. This allows you to save some weight on trails in those sections, but make sure to stock up when your route heads up towards the ridge. Especially if you’re looking to camp in one the beautiful ridge side campsites up there. The extra planning and water weight is well worth the views.
A free permit is required on weekends and holidays from May 1st through October 31st each year. You can find more information on the NFS Grandfather Ranger District website here.
If planning your own trip, I would highly recommend visiting LinvilleGorge.net for maps, info and extensive GPS data including official and unofficial trails, campsites, water sources, etc. Due to the nature of my trip and the fact that their data is so darn good, I didn’t package my own GPS file for this trip, but I did make an overlay map image from their track data that can be downloaded here. Just unzip it and copy the image file to your Garmin’s /Garmin folder if you’re using a Garmin GPS like me, or follow whatever instructions pertain to your particular GPS device.