11 scouts and 9 scouters spent the last throws of summer hiking in the beautiful Dolly Sods Wilderness in the Monongahela National Forest. It’s about 3 hours due west from here and just a tad north of Seneca Rocks in West Virginia.
In order to complete the hiking merit badge the guys have to finish five 10 mile hikes and one 20 miler. This was the twenty miler!
There are many hiking trails in Dolly Sods and Mr. B devised a route for us that worked well (at times it is hard to follow the trails as there are no blazes and occasionally we did some extra sight seeing!!!). We started at 8:45 a.m. and headed off down the Blackbird Knob trail and for the next 10-11 hours weaved our way around the Sods and eventually made it back to the cars at about 6:45 p.m.
I’ve been here quite a few times before and Dolly Sods is known for its fickle weather and damp boggy trails. This couldn’t have been better conditions. The temperature was perfect and the ground dry. All our river crossings (and there were a few) involved no wet feet which was great.
One of the reasons Dolly Sods is my favourite spot to hike is the continuously changing vegetation. One moment you are walking through a cranberry bog, then across a huckleberry plain whilst weaving in and out of red spruce, sugar and red maple, eastern hemlocks, black cherry, American beech, pine and hickory! It’s an amazing place and you can see some of that reflected in the pictures.
20 miles is a long way! It is not a flat hike, but all the guys did a great job. The scouts hiking were Charlie, Ian, Mario, Manuel, Kai, Jason, Matthew H., Braden, Jack, Brandon and Jordon. Scouters present were Alexa, Jason, Shelly, Aaron, David, Mike, Anne and Steve.
When we finished there really was a great sense of achievement and right now as I type I ache from head-to-toe (but it's actually a nice ache!).
Congratulations to Ian, Mario, Manuel, Matthew and Braden who have now completed the badge (and Charlie who has now done it twice but please don’t remind him!!). We also have a bunch of guys who just have one more 10 miler to complete.
Our next hike will be a 10 miler on Oct. 2nd and the Philmont crew will start using their big-boy packs!!!