Dolly Sods Wilderness Backpack WV
Friday, June 20 – Sunday, June 22, 2025
Leader: David Mong
This was one of our regular backpacking trips where we camp at some of the spectacular viewpoints at Dolly Sods. Dolly Sods is a wilderness area inside of the 900,000 acre Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia. It features a wide variety of terrain including that similar to northern Canada on a high elevation plateau with a short growing season.
While the weather was spectacular during the trip, we had a lot of rain ahead of it and conditions were more muddy than usual. Several participants dropped out. When we arrived we changed the plan to camp further upstream due to reports of high water. During our first night, one participant became ill and they were hiked out on Saturday as was the whole group because their vehicle was in another location and there was no co-leader to split the group. The rest of the group camped out at the Rohrbaugh cliff area, our intended first night location for a spectacular end to the trip. The bad stream crossings were beyond this point on the trail. One experienced participant signed out of the group early on Sunday morning due to an issue at home. The route out was straightforward so the leader allowed it. Total mileage was about 10 with about 600 feet of elevation gain/loss. Sounds short for a whole weekend but the terrain due to the wet conditions was very difficult. The Mountain Laurel was in full bloom and there was no dew on either night. Several of us slept under the stars.
The leader is a trained B-Bucking level crosscut sawyer with the USFS and member of the Dolly Sods Wilderness Backcountry Stewards and he carried his hand tools and safety gear including hard hat, gloves and safety glasses. Several small trees blocking the trail were cleared and one larger tree was marked via photos and GPS for a crosscut team to deal with later. We had already cleared one of these trails a few weeks before.
The group included ADK members Kathy F, Alkesh M and guests Bill S and Jon W. The leader was David Mong.
