Tag Archives: hammock camping

How to Survive an Ice Storm – Hammock Camping the Roaring Plains

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3 Days of Winter Hammock Camping and Backpacking in the Roaring Plains Wilderness during Snow and Freezing Rain.

FTC Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission for purchases made through some of my links.

For this late winter backpacking trip, I decided to head back down to West Virginia’s Monongahela National forest to do some ridge hiking and cold weather hammock camping. Due to temperatures forecasted from the low 20’s to the low 40’s, I needed to pack in some heavier warm clothing layers for this trip, along with some camp tools, so I used my larger winter backpack.  For sleep and shelter, I used my go-to ultralight hammock and tarp set-up with winter grade down quilts (full gear list below).  As it turns out, I probably should have used that extra pack space for a larger tarp too, but live and learn I guess…

This trip video was sponsored by Magic Spoon.  You can try their variety pack and get $5 off by using this link and the code Sintax77.

The 6,792 acre Roaring Plains West Wilderness is a remote federal wilderness area located about 3 miles south of the more popular Dolly Sods Wilderness Area.  It boasts a healthy network of trails, which are unmarked and often, grown in and hard to follow.  Official paper maps are hard to come by, and by some accounts, not very up to date.  Based on my personal experience, I would highly recommend using a GPS with appropriate data while hiking here.  You can also find good trail info and map print-outs at MidAtlanticHikes.com and HikingUpward.com.  I also recorded my personal GPS data for this trip, which can be found here.

Route Overview – Roaring Plains Backpacking Loop – Sintax77

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3 Days of Campfire Cooking and Hammock Camping – Harpers Ferry West Virginia

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Hammock Camping, Trail Cooking and the search for an Elusive Hearth in the Woods of West Virginia.

FTC Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission for purchases made through some of my links.

For this early February hammock camping trip, I set out to hike a 3 day hike with a nostalgic goal – to find a giant campfire hearth that my friend and I had built five years ago, somewhere off of the Appalachian Trail near the town of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.  I had always wondered if it was still standing after all these years, and thought it would be a great excuse to spend some time in the woods a cook some hearty camping meals.

My weather conditions were forecasted to have a pretty wide range during this trip, from the upper 50’s down to 30 degrees each evening.  I had a rough idea of the hearth’s location.  We built it at camp not too long after leaving the Harpers Ferry National Historic Area’s boundary while heading south on the Appalachian Trail.  My goal for the first day was to get myself to a legal camping area in this general area so I could search for it first thing the next morning.  If I found it early, I would then have the option to do a day hike to Loudoun Heights and Split Rock for views of the Shenandoah River and Potomac River below the ridge.

For sleep and shelter on this trip, I went with a simple hammock camping and ultralight tarp setup (gear list below).  I used the extra space in my winter backpack to load up on extra clothing layers, a saw for harvesting firewood, a stool for working in my makeshift camp kitchen, and my white gas stove system paired up with a fry pan and diffuser to try my hand at baking some trail bread at camp.  The cooler temps also allowed me to bring some “real” food, so I brought along some ingredients to make some smoked sausage one day and pasta with a slow cooked meat sauce the next.

This trip video was sponsored by Anker and their model 521 and 535 Portable Power Station.

Route Overview – Harpers Ferry Loudoun Heights Winter Backpacking Trip – Sintax77

Full GPS track data, including campsites, etc, for this trip and many others can be downloaded on my Trip Data Page.

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50 Miles of Hammock Camping in 3 Days – Backpacking on Cranberry Lake

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3 days of Backpacking & Hammock Camping along Cranberry Lake in the Adirondacks

FTC Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission for purchases made through some of my links.

For this adventure, I decided to do a fall backpacking trip with some higher trail mileage than I’ve been doing lately. Nestled in New York’s Five Pond Wilderness, the Cranberry Lake 50 is a fifty mile loop hike that circumnavigates it’s namesake, and passes by many smaller ponds along the way as well. Most of these smaller ponds have campsites or even a lean-to shelter nearby, which is quite nice.

The CL50 is not really an individual trail, but a collection of trail sections from 12 other trails is the area.  The route is well blazed with blue CL50 plastic discs nailed to trees along the way.  The trails used to make up the CL50 are blazed with similar yellow trail discs, so you will often see both blazes simultaneously.

The Cranberry Lake 50 goes directly through two towns – Wanakena, where I started, and the town of Cranberry Lake.  There’s only about 10 trail miles between them, so neither really poses much logistical value for resupplying, but they are nice towns to stroll through.

I chose to do the loop counter clockwise from Wanakena because the last 10 miles traverse some muddy wet sections due to beaver dams, so I figured it would be best to save that for the last afternoon.

I typically like to hike my backpacking trips on a 3 day, 2 night timeline, so that meant my daily trail mileage had to be around 17 miles or so during the shortened daylight hours of October.  On the upside, this hike is primarily along the perimeter of a lake, with minimal elevation changes, but did I mention that I hadn’t done a high mileage trip in a while? Yeah, the headlamp got a good amount of usage on this one. Let the night hiking begin…

Route Overview – Cranberry Lake 50 Backpacking Loop – Sintax77

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Hundred Degree Hammock Camping with Thunderstorms – Black Forest Trail

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3 days of Backpacking, Thunderstorms & Hammock Camping in Heavy Rain on a section of Pennsylvania’s Black Forest Trail. 

For this adventure,  I headed out for a 3 day, 2 night solo backpacking trip in Pennsylvania’s Tiadaghton State Forest.  The full Black Forest Trail is a rugged 43 mile loop with 8,550′ of elevation gain that I’ve done in the past and really enjoyed.

Facing a July forecast in the triple digits with thunderstorms, and the fact that my last solo hike was a pretty intense one, I decided to scale the mileage back this time.  My general plan was to simply go into the woods and use the network of connector trails to come up with a route on the fly, based on how the weather played out from day to day.

Black Forest Trail Short Loop – Route Overview – Sintax77

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Hammock Camping on the Six Husbands Trail

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Hammock Camping and Solo Backpacking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire

FTC Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission for purchases made through some of my links.

For this adventure, I decided to get back to my ultralight backpacking roots with a rugged 27 mile loop through the Great Gulf Wilderness, Dry River Wilderness, and Presidential Range, with a gross elevation gain of around 8,400 feet. The centerpiece of my loop would be the Six Husbands Trail, a trail that some say is the most difficult in the White Mountain National Forest. Now , if you’re familiar with the WMNF, you probably know that just about every trail is pretty intense, so this could get interesting…

For sleep and shelter, I went with my standard minimalist hammock camping setup consisting of a 10 oz hammock, 5 oz tarp, and a pair of 40° down quilts.  This got my base weight down to around 7 lbs. A full gear list can be found at the bottom of this post.

The Six Husbands Trail was Built from 1909 to 1910 by trail builder Warren W. Hart of the Appalachian Mountain club. Hart was known to build his trails specifically with adventure in mind, and this trail was no exception. It begins deep in the Great Gulf Wilderness at the junction with Wamsutta Trail, which along with the connected Alpine Garden trail is actually just the renamed southern portion of the Six Husbands trail. Wamsutta was one the six husbands of female Indian Chief, Weetamoo, who has a nearby waterfall named after her.

White Mountains Six Husbands Backpacking Loop – Route Overview – Sintax77

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3 Days Hammock Camping with 8 Pounds of Gear

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3 days of Hammock Camping & Solo Ultralight Backpacking in Virginia’s George Washington National Forest.

FTC Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission for purchases made through some of my links.

For this backpacking trip, I headed down to the border of Virginia and West Virginia for some early spring camping to get a dose of some warmer weather, babbling brooks, and mountain views.

With the milder temps and decent forecast, I was able to get my base weight down to 7.75 pounds, a welcome change after hauling some pretty heavy loads my previous few backpacking trips.

For sleep and shelter, I went with my minimalist hammock camping setup consisting of a 10 oz hammock, 5 oz tarp, and a pair 40° down quilts.  The 14 mile Little Schloss Loop has a decent amount of unofficial, but preestablished campsites with some nice  open areas and decently spaced trees, making it a great loop for hammocks. You can find my full backpacking gear list for this trip at the end of this post.

Water is plentiful on the Little Stony Creek side of the loop, but the ridge side of the loop that I started with is dry for the first 5 miles, so I packed in a full load of water for my first day.  Finding water every couple of miles on the remaining two days was no problem at all.

Route Overview – Little Schloss Backpacking Loop – Sintax77

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