I've been intending to get more into backpacking, and this past weekend I finally took the plunge. I and three other women from the hiking group went to the Stone Door area of the South Cumberland Recreation Area for a two-day trip.
My backpack weighed around 30 pounds. A good pack redistributes the weight, and mine did. My shoulders and back don't feel at all sore or tired. That doesn't mean that the weight doesn't have an impact. My legs are tired from carrying the burden, and we couldn't cover as much ground as we could have without the weight. In fact, we probably could have done the entire two days as a one-day trip.
(This was one of the reasons I hadn't taken the plunge. Why backpack to what you can hike to anyway? Well, because you have to start somewhere in order to work up to more.)
The trip was a lot of fun - particularly the sense of accomplishment at the end of it.
4 comments:
What trails did you do there? I'm really wanting to do the Big Creek Gulf/Savage Day Loop with Ranger Falls thrown in again this fall. I did it about 7 years ago when I was in much better shape. It's about 9 miles total, but it's pretty intense and even the small guy that was in great shape was whipped by the end of it.
Big Creek Gulf is at the west end; Savage Day Loop is at the east end. Did you take the connector trail between the two?
We stuck around the west side. We started at Stone Door, took the Laurel Trail to the Alum Gap site, and set up camp. Then we hiked to Greeter Falls/Blue Hole and back. The next day we took the Big Gulf Creek and Stone Door trail back to the ranger station. No more than six miles each day.
Oops. I meant the Big Creek Rim. We parked at the Stone Door station, went down the door, stopped at Ranger Falls for lunch and a break, then headed west towards the Alum Gap campground to get back up to the rim and followed the BCR back to the Stone Door parking area. That's about 9 miles total I think. I haven't been to the eastern part yet.
Ranger Falls is really pretty. It's in a natural bowl shaped area and when we were there was filled with the pastel blue moths.
We ended up skipping Ranger Falls because all the other falls were dry, so we figured it would be, too.
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