3 Days of Backpacking, Hiking & Hammock Camping on the Appalachian Trail in Virginia.
For this late summer backpacking trip I’ll be hiking the Virginia Triple Crown, which consists of three iconic Virginia hiking destinations – McAfee Knob, Tinker Cliffs, and Dragon’s Tooth.
To create the loop, I essentially took an Appalachian Trail section hike and combined it with the North Mountain trail to close it off into a 35 mile backpacking loop. This gave me a healthy southern mix of mountain hiking, open pastures, and sweeping summit views.
I went with my most basic warm weather ultralight backpacking gear list for this trip, just to keep things simple and light. Due to the threat of rain, I also included a full set of rain gear. Surprisingly how I was still able to keep my base weight down to around 7.5 lbs. This was mostly achieved by simply leaving non critical items at home. Notable items are below or you can see my full gear list with weights & gear links on LighterPack here.
Virginia Triple Crown Route Overview – Sintax77
No permit is required to camp in this area, but there are some camping restrictions along the Appalachian Trail portion of the hike as well as some private land traversals. You can find more information on the Roanoke Appalachian Trail Club site here.
While on the AT in this area, you may only camp at one of the four designated shelters. Since I was exclusively on the AT for the entire first day, this gave me the following camping options:
- Jonh’s Spring Shelter
- Catawba Shelter (reliable water)
- Campbell Shelter
- Lambert’s Meadow Shelter (reliable water)
I chose to camp near Lambert’s Meadow Shelter, as it was the farthest one into the loop and offered reliable water.
Full GPS track data, including campsites, water sources, etc, for this trip and many others can be downloaded on my Trip Data Page.