Hello folks.
I just joined tonight, and I am looking for a good trail for a trip in Oct or Nov of 2012 in the mountains of Va. Well, actually I wish it was that simple. If it was, I could easily just pick a spot along the AT and go!
Problem is, we will only be taking one car(mine), and therefore we wont have a second car to park at or near our finishing point so we can just drive away when we reach trail's end.
So it appears we need a loop trail to backpack through so we dont have to choose a trail, and later backtrack the same trail(although that may be what we are stuck with). What I would prefer is a good loop so we dont cover the same area twice.
We will be backpacking for parts of 3 days. We will drive over on day 1, hike several miles to camp #1, then the next day will be a long, full day of hiking, til we reach camp #2, then on day #3, we will hike out for several miles and reach the car.
So I would prefer a route that is around 20-27 miles, give or take, and a moderate difficulty trail would be best, because my partner hasnt done too much backpacking. So we dont want to be going up and down mountains the whole time, although obviously elevation gain and loss is inevitable, I just dont want to be traveling from the lower valleys to the peaks over and over…. Ridge run would be fantastic!
We'd like to be in the area of middle to northern Shenandoah natl park, and a trail that spends at least a little time on the AT would be great!
I hope this isnt too tall of an order, and I wish my partner wasnt so worried about leaving her car somewhere for 3 days! If she wasnt this would be much easier! But I'm lucky to have talked her into it at all, so I'm not going to push it!
But maybe there is some other way to deal with this problem without needing 2 cars, but I cant figure it out, and I think hiring a taxi is probably out!
Anyway, any ideas would be appreciated, Thanks
