Roaring Run, April 21

With the recent string of lousy weather that we've had, Jen and I decided to take advantage of the first nice day and go for a short hike with the dogs. We went to the Apollo area Roaring Run Watershed to check out the Rattling Run waterfall series.

The weather was perfect, literally not a cloud in the sky with the temperature in the low 70s. We stopped in Apollo and grabbed some Veggie sandwiches from Subway and drove over to the trailhead. We left the parking area and proceeded down a wide trail, paralleling Roaring Run. After about a half mile, we reached the intersection of Rattling Run, and followed a smaller trail that spurred off to the right. This lead us right up to the first two waterfalls. We scrambled from rock to rock in the creekbed taking pictures, before we headed further up the ravine to find, unsuccessfully, the third waterfall. We turned around headed back to the main trail, following that for a time until we reached a section of the stream that had a large, flat rock that we stood on while Dawson swam for the first time this Spring. Even Sage was tempted by the water and jumped in and cooled off.

Otter Creek, March 9-11

Summary of backpacking trip with Norm to Otter Creek Wilderness area, West Virgina.

March 9th

Met Norm in Deep Creek, Md, in the afternoon. Over a couple of beers, we made a plan to drive to the western side of Otter Creek and enter the wilderness at the Yellow Creek trailhead. After a pit stop in Parsons, WV, we left 'civilization' and began driving south on some old logging roads towards the trailhead. Still four miles away from the trailhead we encountered about a foot of snow on the road and head to abandon our plan of making it all the way to Yellow Creek. We parked, geared up and headed up the road, instead heading for the Moore Run trailhead. Darkness settled with us struggling to find the trailhead, even though the GPSr placed us dead on it. We ended up bushwacking through kneed to waist deep snow, but eventually found the trail. Five exhausting miles later, we had descended to Otter Creek. After an interesting night crossing of the creek, we settled into camp.

March 10th

Saturday's plan was less ambitious than originally planned - we would simply hike south on Otter Creek trail, hit the eastern side of Yellow Creek trail and head west towards the wilderness border (where we had originally planned to park on Friday). The weather was nice, lower 50's and sunny, but we still faced difficult hiking conditions from the deep snow. We made it to the Yellow Creek trailhead and ended up camping at the base of the logging road. After setting up tents, wood was gathered for a campfire, but that plan was spoiled when it began raining. Went to sleep with the sound of a steady and heavy rain hitting the tent fly.

March 11th

Woke to everything covered in ice. Broke camp and began hiking up the road around 10am. Most of the way up the road was pretty easy, with either little snow or a gulley on the side of the road to walk in. That all changed radically when we crested the top of the mountain and started heading more north-northeast. Our steady pace was halted - with the road now covered in snow varying in depths of 2 to 4 feet. At one point we stopped to take a break and seriously discussed shedding the packs and building sleds to pull them on. We trudged onward and
made it through the heavy snow, eventually finding the Moore Run trailhead that had eluded us Friday evening. Lunch and beer at the Blackwater Brewing Company in Davis, WV, then home.

Most essential item: Gaiters
Would've been great to have: Snowshoes (for Sunday, anyways)

In the map, Friday is blue, Saturday green, Sunday red.

First post

Welcome to "Trails and Tales", my online journal of all things related to the outdoors. Mainly I plan to use this blog to record a history of my backpacking trips, hiking excursions, trail runs, and anything else done in the outdoors. The next post will be a summary of the backpacking trip that I just took a couple of weeks ago in the Otter Creek Wilderness area in West Virginia.