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| Me the first day in the Sods |
Backpacking in the
Snow
A year after the hard learned backpacking lessons of my first winter backpacking trip, I again headed out in winter. My second winter backpacking
trip was to West Virginia’s Dolly Sods Wilderness just a year or two after it
was designated a Wilderness. While farther south than Pennsylvania’s Laurel
Highlands Hiking Trail and the Laurel Ridge which it follows, where I had
backpacked the previous winter, Dolly Sods is 1,500 to 2,000 feet higher and
more exposed. It is also more rugged and remote.
I had been to Dolly Sods a few months earlier in the previous
early fall. Dave, my best friend and hiking buddy who had been one of the other
two on the Laurel Highlands Trail trip, had not been there before but was up to
the challenge.
Our ride dropped us off at a snow covered trail head. Other than
the inch or two or snow on the ground, the weather conditions reminded me of
the first day of our previous year’s trip. The sky was blue. The sun was
shining. The air was crisp. Most importantly, the three to five day forecast
for nearby Elkins, WV promised above normal temperatures and no precipitation.
Both Dave and I were more experienced and better outfitted than
we were the year before. If we had any cotton with us it was probably only
bandannas and maybe t-shirts. We both wore or carried wool, nylon shells, and
down parkas. Since no trail shelters were available, we carried a four season
REI Crestline Expedition A-frame mountaineering tent. Our only questionable
gear choice was relying on a chemical heat tab stove for boiling water to
rehydrate freeze dried meals as I had yet to invest in a liquid fuel, white gas
stove.
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Dave greeting the Sunrise at Lions Head
a day or two before the front moved in |
The three to five day forecast generally held true. By our
second day of backpacking around the Sods, all evidence of the previous snow
had melted. On the third or fourth day we were hiking, the temperature must have
been in the low to mid-sixties, and we were wearing short sleeved shirts. We
perhaps would have worn shorts if we had them. We were certainly enjoying one
of the best backpacking trips we had ever experienced, discovering plenty of
water, finding excellent campsites, and enjoying beautiful views–until our
fourth or fifth day, that is.
Here Comes the Cold,
Sleet, Snow, and Wind
As we were heading toward our end of day destination, the Red
Creek Campground, the only developed camping area anywhere near the Sods, the
weather started deteriorating. Clouds moved in blocking the warming sunlight we
had experienced the previous few days. The mid to low-sixties of the previous
day had dropped into the mid to low-forties. A fine mist started falling, a
fine mist that eventually changed over to sleet as the temperature continued to
drop into the thirties. By the time we made it to the Red Creek Campground and
pitched our tent in a flat grassy spot, the windblown sleet that was now
falling at an angle had already accumulated into a thin layer of granular ice
covering grass and rock alike.
In our tent and down bags, we were out of the elements and as
snug as bugs in a rug. Using the small heat tab stove outside the tent but
under the vestibule of the fly, we prepared a dinner of a Mountain House entree
and Mountain House vegetables. Finishing up by the light of a candle lantern
and our headlights, we turned in for the night, expecting to continue
backpacking the following morning.
The wind picked up as we slept and started roaring only as it
can on the Sods, unimpeded by tress or ridges. The sleet turned to snow but did
not accumulate at any alarming rate. The temperature continued to drop,
probably into the twenties or teens. What alerted us to the continuing deteriorating
conditions was when a few steel skewer stakes were pulled from the soft, damp,
unfrozen earth by the increasing force of the wind.
We donned our down parkas and headlights and stepped out into
the bitter cold and fierce wind of the night to reinsert the stakes only to
have then again pulled out with the next heavy gust of wind. Keeping the tent
taunt and up seemed like a constant struggle.
Hunkering Down
The snow stopped falling by morning, and we found only an inch
or two upon a thin layer of frozen sleet. The wind, however, had not died down.
The moist earth had at least partially frozen so the steel skewer tent stakes
were now holding, despite the wind.
Because of the wind and extremely cold temperature, we decided
to hunker down for the day rather than risk frostbite or even hypothermia by
backpacking in such conditions. Eventually, the three person tent, even though
its stakes were holding, began to feel cramped with us and all our gear in it
and we longed to stand up. We put put on our wool and down and walked to one of
the two out houses in the campground where we could at least stand up. We soon
learned, however, that staying in the tent in our sleeping bags was warmer than
standing around in the outhouse, so we eventually moved back and forth until
nightfall. As time wore on we started to think that if the weather did not
improve, or if we did not manage to get down off the Sods and out of the
weather, that we might not survive our second winter backpacking trip.
Bugging Out
By our second morning in Red Creek Campground the wind had died
down, the sun was again shining, but the temperature was still bitter cold. We
decided our best course of action was to call it a trip, break and pack up our
camp, and backpack down and out of the Sods via the Forest Service road rather
than following a trail. When we went to put on our boots, however, we
discovered they were rock hard frozen, even the laces. I would later learn to
put my boots inside a stuff sack and sleep with them inside my bag at night
during cold weather to keep them freezing, but that lesson had not yet been
learned.
As soon as we put on our boots, even though we were wearing
liner and wool socks, both of us were feeling the cold. Our feet, especially
our toes, were cold. After we started hiking we knew we would survive when we
started worrying about frost bitten toes rather than surviving.
We had not been hiking along the snow covered road more than a
few minutes when we saw a pickup truck driving away from us ahead of us. Dave a
whistle he had hanging from a lanyard as loud as he could and we started waving
our arms. We managed to flag down the driver, who turned around and came back
toward us. We explained our predicament and he invited us into the back of the
truck. We climbed in with our packs and snuggled up against the back of the cab
to guard against the wind as he drove off the Sods and down to the warmer and
dryer valley below.
When he dropped us off down in the valley at an establishment
with a pay phone, I called our ride to come and pick us up. While there had
been little snow in the valley to the east of Dolly Sods, there were several
inches of the white stuff on the ground when we arrived in Elkins, to the west
of Dolly Sods.
Looking back, I wish we had been carrying a white gas stove with
a windscreen rather than the chemical heat tab stove. I would soon invest in an
Optimus 8-R that would serve me for years and trips to come. I also wish we had
even a few longer, plastic snow stakes that would have held well in the moist,
soft ground rather than pulling out when the wind started howling. I would soon
invest is some and successfully use them while winter camping the following
winter in the White Mountains. I also wish I had had Super Gaiters to help keep
my feet warm, another eventual purchase that served me well in the Whites.
Otherwise, all my gear performed well.
I have enjoyed several winter backpacking trips and even a two
week winter base camp experience since, but none nearly as harrowing or
uncomfortable as my first two winter backpacking experiences. Apparently I
learned enough from those first winter backpacking trips to make me safer
and more comfortable in spite of adversities such as rain, snow, sleet, hail,
wind, and below freezing temperatures.
This post originally appeared on The Trek.
surrounding valleys.
