Been a month, so I guess I'll throw in some pics from the last four weeks.
-Here's another "High Falls" in AL, this one from a dayhike with my girlfriend in the Cheaha Wilderness.
-The next bunch is from Virgin Falls SNA, near Sparta, TN. My third trip there. To keep things interesting, this time I camped by the Caney Fork River, and hiked the Overlook Trail up to "Martha's Pretty Point"(neither of which I'd done before), plus played among the small falls and cascades down in the creekbed the trail parallels for the first couple of miles on the way in.
Big Laurel Falls
Sheep Cave Falls
One of my trekking poles is somewhere at the top of that bottom tier. Lucky I didn't fall in there with it while climbing down that left side.
Virgin Falls. Maybe my favorite waterfall.
The river near where I camped.
OR Filament pullover. Weighs about the same as some of my cotton t-shirts, warm to ~40F so far(guess it'll be awhile before I get to see if it'll go lower!) and still comfy in the 60s. Now it's all the extra clothing I take for warm weather with cool nights. See my stick I had to cut to use in place of a trekking pole to support my tent? And no bug netting! Got swarmed at the TH, but the bugs weren't bad while hiking, and it went to 41F.
Osprey's new Exos 38, lidless with the "Flapjacket". My stuff is so compact now that I could probably use it for a week in moderate weather, if I ever got out for that long...
Pack weight is ridiculous now, too. I'm way past it being an issue(somewhere between inconsequential and unnoticeable), but it's so much fun to play with this stuff. I start laughing every time I weigh up my gear. This time it was ~12lbs for an overnight, and 3 of that was water that I didn't even need to carry.
Martha's Pretty Point
-Cheaha again. This is Cheaha Falls. I don't take many pics there any more, since I've been there dozens of times.
-These are from North Carolina's Shining Rock Wilderness.
Looking Glass(that rock face in the distance) from the Art Loeb trail.
The scenery was great sometimes, but the view from the trail often looked like this, too...not like those Western mountains!
Think this is from Tennent Mountain, not sure.
Sunset from Shining Rock.
Ivestor Gap.
Think this was while looping around Graveyard Ridge/Fields.
More new toys:
My girlfriend gave me a Four Dog Stove Bushcooker LT Mini Alcohol/Hexamine stove with titanium windscreen. Fantastic(girlfriend and stove), and 70g(just the stove!) after I cut down the pot supports. They're supposed to act as spare tent pegs..whatever-kind of silly, IMO.
Underground Quilts Flight Jacket 50F quilt. 72" length, Wide, full taper, snaps and drawstring at the foot instead of a sewn footbox.
Since I really didn't want anything else, my parents bought it from me before I could use it, then gave it to me as my birthday present.
My parents kind of rock!
Got a new lightweight wood splitter to go with my saw come cool weather again. Mora Companion HD. It's quite visible...
) to Savage Gulf in TN.
