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- Sep 22, 2003
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Excited about my first trip of the summer in a couple weeks.
First going car camping for a couple days at a music festival and then we are leaving there and going backpacking.
Where I was sick in May and just got to feeling better I thought I'd ease into it. Most places I go have a lot of steep and rocky trails so this time I'm going where I've never been before. The Laurel Fork Wilderness.
It's a long narrow Wilderness with a north and south part. We are hiking both for about 18 or 19 miles total but it's supposedly only a slight grade and not rocky. Also since it's been hot here it will be nice because it's all by the river.
Here's some info about the place:
http://www.fs.fed.us/r9/mnf/sp/laurel_forks_wildernesses.htm
It looks like the main challenge will be staying on the trail. I am going to print out the directions from the hiking guide and try to follow them fairly closely. But reading stuff like this I know there will probably be some head scratching backtracking moments
http://outdoortravels.com/Hiking_wv_overview_laurelfork.html
Here's a good map of the area:
http://www.fs.fed.us/r9/mnf/rec/wilderness_areas/laurelfork_map.pdf
Hopefully if we do this hike I'll come back and update this with pics and my report.
Sounds like a lot of fun navigation wise!:thumbup:
First going car camping for a couple days at a music festival and then we are leaving there and going backpacking.
Where I was sick in May and just got to feeling better I thought I'd ease into it. Most places I go have a lot of steep and rocky trails so this time I'm going where I've never been before. The Laurel Fork Wilderness.
It's a long narrow Wilderness with a north and south part. We are hiking both for about 18 or 19 miles total but it's supposedly only a slight grade and not rocky. Also since it's been hot here it will be nice because it's all by the river.
Here's some info about the place:
http://www.fs.fed.us/r9/mnf/sp/laurel_forks_wildernesses.htm
It looks like the main challenge will be staying on the trail. I am going to print out the directions from the hiking guide and try to follow them fairly closely. But reading stuff like this I know there will probably be some head scratching backtracking moments
Another issue that began to get our attention was the trail itself. It's easy to follow an old railroad grade on the side of a hill but much more difficult along flat terrain. And trying to find it among all the weeds was next to impossible. Needless to say it wasn't long before we totally lost the trail.
We hacked our way through the weeds for about 25 minutes before noticing that the area along the tree line on the other side was fairly open and much easier to hike through. Now all we had to do was find a way over to the other side. We made several attempts to find a suitable place to cross before finally finding an abandoned beaver dam. We made it across and once again started the arduous task of picking our way through the weeds when I discovered another stream on the other side. We had bushwhacked onto a freakin' island!
We finally did find a place to cross over Laurel Fork farther down but not before going back over the beaver dam, circumnavigating several swampy areas and fighting our way through a couple of rhododendron thickets. When we got over to the other side and worked our way up to the clearing, we discovered why it was so open: It was the &%*@#$ trail! Morons! Apparently when we first entered the open field the trail must have gone straight and we turned to the left. Oh well, what's an Outdoor Travels hike without having to bushwhack to find the trail? At least we knew enough about terrain to spot the trail across the meadow and manage to find it again.
After all that, you would think we would have learned our lesson about paying more attention to the trail, right? But no, not us. We hadn't hiked more then 15 minutes before we were once again searching for the trail. At least this time there weren't waist high weeds to contend with. After several fruitless attempts, we finally located the trail up the hill from where we were.
http://outdoortravels.com/Hiking_wv_overview_laurelfork.html
Here's a good map of the area:
http://www.fs.fed.us/r9/mnf/rec/wilderness_areas/laurelfork_map.pdf
Hopefully if we do this hike I'll come back and update this with pics and my report.
Sounds like a lot of fun navigation wise!:thumbup:
i'm sure we all do..
