3 days of Backpacking and Hammock Camping on Virginia’s Tuscarora Trail.
For this backpacking trip, I decided to head down to the border of West Virginia and Virginia to check out a pretty cool mountaintop lean-to shelter and do a little airplane scavenger hunt in-between the occasional rain showers that always tend to follow me around. On day one I would hike up to the ridge using the Tuscarora Trail, day two I would base camp and explore, and on day three I would hike back out via a different set of trails to complete the loop.
My options for shelter would be to either use the Gerhard Shelter lean-to if I had the place to myself, or a lightweight tarp and minimalist hammock if I decided to wander out further into the woods and camp near the search area and nearby spring.
My April temperature range for this trip was between 40° and 75°. This allowed me to get my backpack’s base weight down to around 10 lbs, while still including my puffy jacket and ultralight rain jacket for supplemental warmth at camp if needed.
The details of the aviation accident site that I was looking for can be found here. It was a small Cessna 150J that went down due to engine power loss and fortunately their were only minimal injuries to one of the two passengers. I’ve never read any reports of anyone actually finding or visiting this site, so I really had no idea if there would be anything to be found. But hey, it was a good excuse to get out into the woods, so I grabbed my pack and headed out for some adventure…
3 days of Hammock Camping & Solo Ultralight Backpacking on a 40 mile Grand Loop of the Linville Gorge Wilderness.
For this backpacking trip, I headed back down to North Carolina’s Pisgah National Forest for some hammock camping and another attempt at the “Grand Loop”, a roughly 40 mile trek with 11,000 feet of gross elevation gain.
The Linville Gorge Grand Loop is not a single official trail. It’s actually a patchwork of several official and unofficial trails. In fact, due to the extensive network of unofficial trails in the Gorge, there isn’t really any one “real” way to do the loop. The basic goal is simply to circumnavigate the gorge, hiking along the Linville River on the west side, and along the ridge top of the gorge on the east side. Whatever trails you decide to use is really up to you.
The upper ridges stand an average of 1,400 feet above the river banks below, with trails frequently descending down to the river and back up again on rugged terrain, without signage or trail blazes, and minimal use of switchbacks. This can make for some challenging hiking, that I personally believe to be some of the toughest on the east coast. The pay off is a heavy sense of adventure compared to traditional trails and some amazing mountain top views of the surrounding Blue Ridge Mountains.
Thank you to Upstart for sponsoring this trip. See how they can help you build your credit and get free of high interest debt at Upstart.com/Sintax
My mid-May temperature range for this trip was between 45° and 85° with no rain in the forecast until the end of the third day. This allowed me to get my backpack’s base weight down to around 9 lbs by leaving my puffy jacket and extra base layers at home. I simply packed a long sleeve shirt and my ultralight rain jacket for supplemental warmth at camp if needed.
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 it 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. Fortunately, I was able to take advantage of several springs up on the ridge that were still flowing at the time of my trip.
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. They also have a free version of their map available on the Avenza phone app. Due to the fact that their data is so darn good, I didn’t package my own GPS file for this trip, but you can use this Caltopo link that someone from LinvilleGorge.net posted containing all of the trails and POI coordinates
Hammock Camping, Trail Cooking and the search for an Elusive Hearth in the Woods of West Virginia.
FTC Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission for purchases made through some of my links.
For this early February hammock camping trip, I set out to hike a 3 day hike with a nostalgic goal – to find a giant campfire hearth that my friend and I had built five years ago, somewhere off of the Appalachian Trail near the town of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. I had always wondered if it was still standing after all these years, and thought it would be a great excuse to spend some time in the woods a cook some hearty camping meals.
My weather conditions were forecasted to have a pretty wide range during this trip, from the upper 50’s down to 30 degrees each evening. I had a rough idea of the hearth’s location. We built it at camp not too long after leaving the Harpers Ferry National Historic Area’s boundary while heading south on the Appalachian Trail. My goal for the first day was to get myself to a legal camping area in this general area so I could search for it first thing the next morning. If I found it early, I would then have the option to do a day hike to Loudoun Heights and Split Rock for views of the Shenandoah River and Potomac River below the ridge.
For sleep and shelter on this trip, I went with a simple hammock camping and ultralight tarp setup (gear list below). I used the extra space in my winter backpack to load up on extra clothing layers, a saw for harvesting firewood, a stool for working in my makeshift camp kitchen, and my white gas stove system paired up with a fry pan and diffuser to try my hand at baking some trail bread at camp. The cooler temps also allowed me to bring some “real” food, so I brought along some ingredients to make some smoked sausage one day and pasta with a slow cooked meat sauce the next.
This trip video was sponsored by Anker and their model 521 and 535 Portable Power Station.
Backpacking, Hiking & Winter Tent Camping with Snow in Pennsylvania’s Hammersley Wild Area.
FTC Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission for purchases made through some of my links.
For this early December backpacking trip, I set out to hike a 3 day, 20ish mile loop in the mountains of north central Pennsylvania. I created my loop by using a portion of the Susquehannock Trail System, some off-trail bushwhacking, and a ridge hike along the adjacent Twin Sisters Trail.
My weather conditions were forecasted to have some fresh snow, temps mostly in the 20’s and a potential for freezing rain as the temps rose further into the trip. While this was a pretty wide range of possible conditions, it also wasn’t terribly cold, so I was still able to pack somewhat ultralight and minimal. My camping target for day one was down in the hollow along the banks of Hammersley Fork. On day two I planned to head up to the ridge and camp in the area devoid of trees due to a forest fire back in 1962. Due to the potential lack of trees, I swapped out my typical hammock setup for a single person tent and sleeping pad to keep my campsite options flexible.
The Hammersley Wild Area is the most remote swath of public land in Pennsylvania, with some spots over 5 miles from the nearest road, which combined with the season, I hoped would make for some rather secluded camping. Conversely, this area is also a haven for public hunting, so I made sure to wear some blaze orange and remain somewhat quiet and on the trail until I got further away from any road access, as it was the middle of PA deer hunting season.
This trip video was sponsored by Dr Prepare. You can get 10% off their 178Wh Portable Power Station by using code STDP10 with this link.
3 days of Backpacking & Hammock Camping along Cranberry Lake in the Adirondacks
FTC Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission for purchases made through some of my links.
For this adventure, I decided to do a fall backpacking trip with some higher trail mileage than I’ve been doing lately. Nestled in New York’s Five Pond Wilderness, the Cranberry Lake 50 is a fifty mile loop hike that circumnavigates it’s namesake, and passes by many smaller ponds along the way as well. Most of these smaller ponds have campsites or even a lean-to shelter nearby, which is quite nice.
The CL50 is not really an individual trail, but a collection of trail sections from 12 other trails is the area. The route is well blazed with blue CL50 plastic discs nailed to trees along the way. The trails used to make up the CL50 are blazed with similar yellow trail discs, so you will often see both blazes simultaneously.
The Cranberry Lake 50 goes directly through two towns – Wanakena, where I started, and the town of Cranberry Lake. There’s only about 10 trail miles between them, so neither really poses much logistical value for resupplying, but they are nice towns to stroll through.
I chose to do the loop counter clockwise from Wanakena because the last 10 miles traverse some muddy wet sections due to beaver dams, so I figured it would be best to save that for the last afternoon.
I typically like to hike my backpacking trips on a 3 day, 2 night timeline, so that meant my daily trail mileage had to be around 17 miles or so during the shortened daylight hours of October. On the upside, this hike is primarily along the perimeter of a lake, with minimal elevation changes, but did I mention that I hadn’t done a high mileage trip in a while? Yeah, the headlamp got a good amount of usage on this one. Let the night hiking begin…
Route Overview – Cranberry Lake 50 Backpacking Loop – Sintax77
3 days of Solo Backpacking, Hiking & Tent Camping on a section of the Appalachian Trail in Virginia’s Grayson Highlands.
FTC Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission for purchases made through some of my links.
For this 3 day, 2 night backpacking trip, I headed out for some hiking and solo camping in the Lewis Fork Wilderness and Mt Rogers National Recreation Area, within the larger George Washington and Jefferson National Forest.
With an emphasis on exploring the wild pony grazing areas surrounding Pine Mountain rather than grinding out mileage, I created a modest loop by combining a portion of the Appalachian Trail with the Virginia Highlands Trail. This gave me a super laid route with my campsites for the first and second nights located in the same general area, separated by less than a couple of miles.
I had a backup plan to do a larger 22 mile loop similar to the one I did in this area a few years back, but I knew from that trip that there was a good possibility I would want to slow things down and soak in the sights in this particular area. Overall, I was very happy with my choice, but keep in mind that there are many more spots to explore if you’re planning your own trip to the Grayson Highlands. The details of my previous larger loop can be found here if you’re interested.
The Grayson Highlands are known for their high winds and unpredictable, rapidly changing weather, but luckily for me, the mid September forecast called for an ideal temperature range of 55 to 80 degrees. This allowed me to get by on an ultralight backpacking setup with minimal extra clothing and gear. My shelter for this trip was my Outdoor Vitals 1p tent in “fast and light” mode – which just means that I left the main tent body with bugnet at home and set it up using only the tent fly, poles and ground cloth.
Thank you to Revtown Jeans for sponsoring this trip video!
This is an easily accessible grass and gravel parking area with room for a decent amount of cars. No fee or permit is required for parking or backcountry camping. There are pit toilets without running water on site. I began my hike at the gate on the other side of the road.
