I’m lucky enough to have a 21 year-old daughter who loves to backpack. I live in PA and she’s in Vermont so it can be tough to coordinate our schedules, but we managed to find a weekend in July when we could go. We decided to give the Dolly Sods Wilderness a try.
We did the four-hour drive to the Sods on a Saturday morning and were lucky to find a place to leave our car when we arrived at the trailhead. We started hiking around 11:30 on an absolutely spectacular day with the temperature around 85 degrees.
In spite of the number of cars at the trailhead we really felt like we mostly had the area to ourselves. Katie kept commenting on how “Lord of the Rings” it felt…
We were there the weekend of July 23-24 and were happy to find that some of the huckleberries were ripe.
I knew that the Sods had some wide open spaces, but I was not prepared to spend most of the day hiking in full sun. We both had some sunburn on our arms, neck, and faces. In PA it’s rare to be out of the shade for any period of time and I stupidly stopped carrying sunblock years ago.
We arrived at our campsite around 5:30 after covering 10 miles and were setting up when we heard a “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?” from the woods on the other side of the stream. Katie was convinced it was a person, but a few minutes later this guy flew to a branch over the stream and watched us for about 5 minutes. I definitely wasn’t used to seeing owls out at 6:15 pm…
We both slept well in our hammocks and were on the trail at 9 am the next morning planning to hit the Lion’s Head and then continue on for another 10 mile day. One thing to note about Dolly Sods: The trails are well signed at all intersections and are USUALLY obvious, but there aren’t any blazes. Well…I missed the cutoff to head up to the Lion’s Head and we continued on down the Rocky Point Trail. By the time we realized my mistake we had covered almost three miles on a rather nasty trail. I assumed that the trail name came from the hike up to the Lion’s Head – it didn’t:
We decided not to double back and reached “The Forks” (where two streams meet) at lunchtime and enjoyed our lunch. This was actually our planned destination for the night but we’d only covered about five miles. It was hot and more humid than the previous day so we agreed to make it a ten mile day and just head out to the car and drive home. A shower at this point was sounding pretty good.
I try to avoid hiking when it’s warm (much less hot) – I’m one of those guys who sweats a ton even when hiking in November in PA. After lunch we purified a couple more liters of water and then began what amounted to our only real climb of the trip. About a third of the way up I had to wring out my sweat towel…
While I missed that much of the Sods is exposed to the sun, one thing that did stick with me was the expectation that our feet would get wet and muddy. I don’t believe it had rained for quite some time because the trails were dusty and the muddy areas were easily crossed. We made it to within about three miles of our car before we hit the bogs of the Dobbin Grade Trail.
You have to find your way around these sinkholes – these are not puddles that you walk through and get a little wet or muddy. My right foot sank about 2 inches in the muck, but when I put my left foot down I went in up to my knee!
I was quite glad to have my trekking poles so I could self-extract (my daughter wasn’t able to help me because she was laughing so hard).
After managing our way around another five or so of these bogs we finally hit the dusty trail for our final mile or so back to the car. We had a great Daddy-Daughter trip and I’ll definitely be going back to the Sods again (I’ll just plan my trip to avoid the bogs).
