Dolly Sods Backpacking

This past weekend I went on a backpacking trip to Dolly Sods with Buddy. The weather/season was perfect.

It was a pretty good trip. Buddy made for an excellent backpacking partner, though I’ve ridden enough with him to figure he would.

You can (lots) of pictures here in the gallery. Yes. The second half is mostly Buddy hiking the last day. I thought it was the best way to capture what we were hiking through. I only wish I’d done it more the previous two days.

You may also notice the beaver dam and bogs. That was fun. Good thing that was the last day or being that wet from the beginning would have really sucked.

You can also see Buddy’s photos here.

Hopefully I’ll get some routes/waypoints up. At one point I was trying to mark the cool campsites we came across for future reference.

Of course this wouldn’t be a proper post without a cute picture of Abigail. No. She didn’t go (this time), but she did help me unpack.

Other points of interest:

• I totally screwed up my heels. I need better boots, socks or something.
• Gretchen got cold in the 30 – some degree temps Saturday night. I’ll have to get her some kind of coat.
• Wet wood is a serious pain in the ass to burn. All the wood we had Sat. night was wet and took forever to burn.
• Beer’s nice, but there’s got to be a lighter way.
• Gretchen got a few hot-spots wearing her chest protector and backpack. I’ll have to fix that in the future.
• There was a guy with his 4 kids and wife backpacking. Only the two youngest (who carried only toys) looked like they were having fun.
• There was another guy (dirty goofy hippy type) hiking along with a 24oz. can of Foster’s. He was having a great time.
• I need a lighter stove for warmer trips. Or, we should have taken Buddy’s jetboil.

– b