Three Days in the West Virginia Backcountry - Dolly Sods Wilderness
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- Опубликовано: 1 окт 2024
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Dolly Sods, West Virginia is worth a backpacking trip if you're within a days drive of it. It's a great place to get some east coast elevation and do a few nights of backpacking; we did 2 nights but there's enough trails to justify 3 or 4 nights if you wanted. We walked the edge of wilderness starting at the Bear Rocks Trailhead and heading in a counterclockwise rotation, ultimately making our way down towards the very very very small town of Laneville. Elevation and climbing is moderate, we range anywhere between 2,800 feet on the low end up to 4,000 feet on the high end.
Plenty of water; if anything there was too much water. My feet stayed soaked almost the entire trip due to poor trail conditions - eroded and holding water. Not to mention the beaver meadow you have to walk through on the last day to get out, that's just a bog.
Safe travels friends and good luck!
pretty good video
It's there waiting for you to go check out sometime!
Cool trip, I'm heading there in a few weeks. Was the campsite on night #1 on the big stone coal trail (513), just south of the Blackbird knob trailhead? And the really boggy area, was that Dobbins grade trail, maybe 2 miles from where you started the road walk back to the car?
That first night was actually somewhere north of Blackbird Knob trailhead - I think where the Rocky Ridge trail dumps into the Blackbird Knob trail. I remember because we were coming from the north and just wanted to get off the ridge for the night. We jumped in the first campsite we came to but there were several in the area with good water.
And yeah you're spot on with the bog. That was Dobbins, we made our way out to the Beaver Dam Trailhead and walked the road back north to Bear Rocks Trailhead. Hope this helps, and hope y'all have a good trip!
Dolly sods is a high elevation plateau that was owned by a German man, I believe, with the family name of Johann Dahle. It was eventually Americanized to dolly and the sods part of the name comes from the areas you were speaking on. The open plains are calls sods where cattle and sheep grazed. I’m sure trees were felled there but it was mostly naturally occurring I believe. Along with the grazing animals. Dolly sods is my favorite place to backpack.
Thanks for sharing all this! Couldn't agree more with you too, great place to go backpacking.
I’m pretty sure that area had buffalo at one time. The Shenandoah valley was said to have grass taller than the horses. The buffalo and other deer and such kept it grass and the grass was so tall trees wouldn’t start to grow. Looks like a fun spot, a bit muddy.
Muddy is an understatement! Yeah to my understanding savannas and prairies with tons of tall grass were the norm back in the day, kinda like this. Plenty of land in WV, maybe they'll re-introduce buffalo one day lol
underrated
Will catch up on your movies when we get some WiFi
Wherever y'all are (still in Baja??) I'm sure it's better than the land of wifi!
Any other good backpacking spots in WV y'all think I should go check out?
Check out Seneca Creek Backcountry/Spruce Knob
@@SmokeyT63 haha it's ironic you mention that one because after this trip I drove down and backpacked that area for a night, fantastic trip! Video for that one should be done here pretty soon.