This may be my favorite video I've ever recorded! Welcome back for another amazing backpacking adventure in the lovely state of West Virginia. Being an Ohio native, we're very limited with our backpacking trails here. There are some good options in Pennsylvania and Kentucky, but I find myself gravitating towards the beautiful mountains of West Virginia more often than not.

This particular adventure is in the Dolly Sods Wilderness, Monongahela National Forest, WV. This is my third hiking and camping trip to Dolly Sods, but the first time I have ever seen the beauty of the Sods in the autumn. Despite being here three times, this wilderness feels new and exciting each time I visit. The red leaves of the blueberries bushes in the meadows, the dark green of the spruce groves, the blue sky stretching across the top of the expansive Canaan Valley and so much more! Oh, and did I mention the WIND?!

We started this trip off a little differently than most of our backpacking trips. We decided not to burn a vacation day, so we departed Ohio after work on Friday night and made the five hour commute to the Bear Rocks trailhead. We stepped off at about 9:30pm and made our way into a nice campsite along one of the forks of Red Creek at about 11pm. We managed to find a small campsite next to the water tucked back into a spruce grove.

The daylight of day two brought with it the first glimpses of the fall colors. We did a ton of hiking along the plateau through the picturesque meadows of Dolly Sods. Beautiful rock formations, patches of woodlands, enormous views overlooking the valleys. We ended up hiking super slow because we just wanted to take it all in. I wanted to record EVERYTHING, but we had ground to cover. We ended up camping on Breathed Mountain Trail for the night.

As you can hear in the majority of the video, we had constant winds the entire trip. Sustained winds were constantly going between 10-20mph with frequent gusts up to 40mph all three days of the trip. I was super impressed with my new tarp, the Hammock Gear Dyneema Tarp with doors. I pitched the tarp in "storm mode" using every guyout point, including the panel pullouts that I supported with my trekking poles. As evidenced in the video, I used shock cord at all of my guyout points to relieve the stress off the failure points in the high winds.

I was very impressed with how the tarp handled itself in those conditions. There was barely any noise from the material being impacted by the wind and I had one of the best nights of sleep I've ever had on trail. That was thanks in part to my warm and comfy 20 degree quilts from Warbonnet Outdoors. I also decided to throw my underquilt protector on for this trip as well due to the high winds and that proved to be the right decision.

What else can I say? This trip was PERFECT despite the conditions. I was in the right place, at the right time, with the right gear and the right person to share it with. This is one for the record books that I will never forget and I'm glad I got to record so much beautiful footage for you all to see! 

If you want to see all of the gear I brought with me on this trip, check out the link below!
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If you want to plan a trip to the Dolly Sods Wilderness, here is my GPX file that includes multiple routes and waypoints for water sources and campsites!
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Join our Facebook group and ask us some questions and tag along on our annual trip!
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