The group that I backpack with took a long planned outing to Dolly Sods. We split into two groups, one hiking the northern portion of Dolly Sods, the second focusing on the Red Creek area. Access to Dolly Sods is best from the north taking route 48/55 from Strasburg, Va. Dolly Sods signs from these routes are well done. We actually used Google Maps to guide us into the wilderness area. Worked fine.
Our Meetup group is called Virginia Backpacking. Here is the link to our website.
https://www.meetup.com/Virginia-Backpacking/
We were astonished when we got into the wilderness on forest service road 75. On Saturday morning, the first parking lot on the northern end of the wilderness had over 200 cars parked. When we got to the parking area for Red Creek there were close to 50 cars squeezed into the parking area. At this point, we were concerned about finding camping space once we got into the area but it turned out to be OK. It appears that there are a lot of day hikers coming to the area and finding camping space was easy.
We had heard that parts of the trail could be muddy. This proved so. Some wet areas the trail had been trampled almost 50 feet wide. Trail markings were limited as well. This proved a challenge in some spots when our route took us through camping areas. Within these, the trail simply disappeared amidst all of the campsites. Cairns built by hikers helped.
I didn't include all of the vistas in my trip video. But there are a number that warrant an afternoon looking off into the distance. Fall colors must be jaw-dropping beautiful. We've already talked about scheduling a return trip to see. In the meantime, hope you enjoy a glimpse at what we discovered in the video below.
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