A Weekend in the Sods, late September

[John Rowan]

I have some copy and pasting to do (i.e. need to edit the post), so I’m doing a “first post” here. Actual TR will be up in a few minutes.

Here’s a picture of a cat in the meantime:

 

[John Rowan]

Considering that I had the chance this summer to take a huge chunk of time to go and hike about 750 miles of the PCT, I’m as surprised as anybody to find that this is the trip report that compelled me to get behind my keyboard first, but here we are.

I’ve been wanting to check out the Dolly Sods area for years, preferably during fall, and after seeing Gen from Yama’s posts on Instagram showing some gorgeous early fall colors, I was sold. After a quick check on hunting seasons (yup, bear), I snagged some rather stylish orange and made my way down. And down. And down. Turns out that the drive was a teensy bit longer than anticipated. Whoops. With my 4:30AM wakeup and my 6:30AM departure (had a bit of a trek to pick up the rental car) yielded a 1:30PM arrival at the trailhead. Nice, crisp alpine start. Fortunately, I have plenty of daylight left. Oh, wait, no- it’s fall. I have about six hours.

Undeterred and armed with a trail map and an itinerary that consisted entirely of the desire to wind up seeing some of the tundra-y stuff at some point, I headed out, going north from the Ror…Roher…Roarbach…er…trail by the picnic area. My general goal was to do a loop around the outer edges of the area and see where the trail took me. Heading up, I got early vistas from the bluffs not far up the trail, and a lovely blend of early fall colors. Nice.

As I moved up the hilly, rocky, but hardly punishing terrain one other thing becomes clear to me- I’m definitely a bit under the weather. This does not come as a total surprise to me, considering that I’ve felt like crap all week, but I’d been chalking it up to just being sleep-deprived and over-caffeinated. Most of my weekend overnight trips involve a good bit of effort just to get to/from the trailhead (picking up a rental car then driving 4-6 hours then repeating the process in reverse the next day), so it’s not hard for me to look for excuses to not go. I didn’t want to do that this weekend, so off I went, even though it turns out that maybe some rest would’ve been the right call. Fortunately, I’ve still got the legs of a man who just hiked 750 miles and a freshly-lightened pack (more on that in a bit), and so I press on.

Heading down into the Red Creek drainage, I’m greeted by gorgeous mountain stream scenery and a really cool little waterfall that, try as I might, I can’t find a great way down to and can’t really get a clear view of. Oh well. Pretty, though. Down at the bottom at what I assume is Red Creek, I walk past some folks who are already set up for the night (why? It’s 3:30) and move on. At this point, I become keenly aware of the fact that I’m not feeling great, and, at this point, I’m not convinced that away from my car is the right direction to go. After a little bit of a break and thinking to myself “I probably shouldn’t have these tremors,” I nonetheless keep heading north. I’ve wanted to see the Sods for a few years, and I’m not going home without at least seeing the cool part.

Heading up the Big Stonecoal trail, I start to wonder if my lack of a plan for where I wanted to go was a bad idea [Ed. note: Yes, I normally do have a plan. ], since I was definitely not seeing the parts of the area that I’d hoped to (although it was very beautiful), and I started to realize that I wasn’t making the miles I’d hoped. All that changed rather suddenly, as the terrain changed dramatically in the span of a few minutes, and I’m suddenly surrounded by a more open landscape and pine forest.

Heading east onto the Blackbird Knob Trail and losing the main trail for a few minutes at a stream crossing (Dolly Sods: Home of the World’s Best-Developed Use Trails), I start to really mind my watch and the projected 7:20ish sunset time. I’m not remotely a stranger to night hiking, but I don’t really love it, and I’d rather not do too much of it here- with the numerous well-loved use trails and heavy cover from fallen leaves, it’s not always easy to find the trail even in the light. Unfortunately for me, I tend to hike late into the night even by thru-hiker standards, so, not surprisingly the abundant camping in the area has become less than abundant. Double unfortunately, I’m well into the wide-open expansive part of the Sods that’s made the area so famous, and I’m not planning on thrashing through it just to sleep. Given a choice between a super-dark patch of spooky woods and impacting a sensitive (I assume) environment because all of the pre-existing campsites are taken, I opt for spooky woods (hooray), and just throw down a groundsheet to cowboy camp in a narrow, but comfy pile of leaves between the trees.

Notwithstanding the fact that I was camped in the stick-breakingest, leaf-thrashingest section of spooky woods I could find, I actually get a pretty decent night’s sleep (thanks, pile of leaves!) and wake up ready to get an early start and attack day two. Unfortunately, my early start was derailed by what turned out to be an unexpectedly extensive and difficult…um, “excavation project,” but, thanks to the late sunrise, my 7AM start doesn’t hurt me too much.

Now firmly in the northern section of Dolly Sods, the area is a wonderland, filled with rich, golden-hour colors and a lovely hanging mist. I’ve seen pictures of this place in the fall and always assumed that there was a good degree of Photoshop enhancement going on, but when I’m out here, the colors are really there.

Giddy in the early morning light, I head up towards Bear Rocks. I don’t know a lot about the area, but an awful lot of Dolly Sods pictures are taken here, so I want to see it. Also, I like bears, and I like rocks. I still don’t feel like myself, but it’s an improvement over yesterday, and the trail is flat even by the standards of someone who just hiked the Oregon section of the PCT. I merrily head along and take a nice step into…thigh deep muck? Apparently, that’s a thing here?

After a few more mucky mishaps (you’d think I’d start paying better attention to my surroundings…), the trail (Dobbin Grade) gets considerably boggier, and it becomes an adventure trying to find my way around the pits of mud that pop up every few minutes. There’s one that’s bad enough and takes long enough to find a route that I seriously consider turning back, but I eventually manage to find a bit that’s only a bit above my ankles and head on through (being VERY careful to test the depth of what’s ahead with my trekking poles), and soon enough, it dries out.

Heading up to Bear Rocks, I was lucky enough to take in the beautiful early(ish)-morning vista in quiet seclusion, surrounded by no more than a few hundred other people who were out there to enjoy the same. The area was beautiful nonetheless, and the cell reception (I know, I know) helped me snag directions back to the interstate (having helpfully left my printed directions and road map at home).

At this point, it’s almost 10AM, and I’m about as far as you can be from my car. Luckily, this isn’t a huge area, but the prospect of doing 12-14 miles to get back to where I’m parked isn’t super appealing since I don’t feel THAT much better and I have a long, long way to drive home. Given the lack of a particularly direct route, I decide to roadwalk back to my car- it’s the shortest distance, plus, I figure that, since it’s a dirt road with pretty views, and the same grade as the trail, it’s not cheating all that much. After about 7 miles of road, I come across a trailhead that gives me a decent route back to my car, so I trade 2 miles of roadwalking for five miles of trail. Good choice. My 1:30 return to my car wound up translating to a 9:00 return home, so I’m ultimately not sorry I took the roadwalk.

Although I know I take a pretty sarcastic tone here for most of this TR, it was a really nice trip overall, and I’m glad I went, even if I was sick and wiped out all week. The area really was gorgeous, and the northern part in particular was just spectacular with the colors. With the driving involved, I probably won’t be coming here all the time, but I feel pretty confident that I’ll be back next fall.

Gear-wise, this trip was also important for me in that I made two small, but significant changes to my kit- namely swapping out my bivy (Bristlecone) for a 3’x8′ sheet of polycryo and replacing my trusty canister setup with a Talenti jar for cold-soaking (first-ever no-cook trip).

Together, these easily dropped a pound off of my pack, but more importantly, I found I really liked the simplicity that they added to my hike. It was really nice to have my jar of couscous ready and waiting to be eaten when I got into camp, and I really enjoyed the added feeling of connection to my surroundings gained from just sleeping on a thin sheet of plastic on the ground (not that I was exactly glamping in the bivy). Long-term, I think I’ll be keeping this setup, although I’ve already swapped the polycryo for a 3oz Tyvek boat anchor. (I had trouble seeing it on the ground and it bunched up too easily when I moved around.)

One of the things I’m coming to realize, especially thanks to my long hikes, is that while I’m not super fussy about weight beyond a certain point, I’ve become really interested in having a more minimalist approach, and have really learned to enjoy having a very simple kit and the efficiency that it brings, along with the ongoing challenge of seeing if I can get by with less.

Over the years, having had a reasonably accelerated introduction to the world of backpacking, one of the things that’s brought me a great deal of satisfaction is following up my summer “big” trips with lower-stakes fall trips where I can actually get a chance to apply what I’ve learned over the summer, fix the mistakes I’ve made, and play around with new ideas. As I get pretty close to the point where I’m not making any major gear adjustments anymore, I’ve been replacing gear in my pack with knowledge in my head, and there’s a real satisfaction in knowing that I’m far more capable of being comfortable, safe, and happy with a 7-pound baseweight than I was the night of my first backpacking trip, when I was carrying 35 pounds worth of stuff on a 2.5-mile out and back.

[Alex H]

Well told and especially the kit reflections at the end.  It is all part of the journey.

[Ryan Tucker]

Thanks for sharing.

[BRYON L]

Thank you. Engaging review/story, and some good reflecting to give me a few things to ponder as well.

[Matt Dirksen]

Thanks so much for sharing.

Your pics brought me right back into the Sods. I personally can’t make it out there until early/mid November, so I’ll be missing the Autumn colors this year.

(I can’t take credit for the above pic. Credit goes to Deb Snelson Photography)

[John Rowan]

Matt- that’s a gorgeous pic. (Although I think I prefer the weather that I had when I was in that same spot.)

One of the things that struck me while I was up there (well, down there) was how close the colors actually came to a lot of the pictures I’d seen. Obviously, there’s a good bit of enhancement and color correction that’s done on the more vivid shots that are out there, but I was amazed at how much of it was actually naturally present in the scenery- a lot of the low-lying bushes really hold the color quite nicely.

[Pete Garcia]

Nice write-up, Rowan! Let me know next time you’re going!

[Ben C]

Looks like a fabulous trip.

[Author]

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