Thursday, May 27, 2010

Appalachian Trail

I've been a long time gone from the mountains. So I'll be away from the keyboard and away from my blog for a number of days. I'll be hiking the Appalachian Trail and exploring a wilderness area where I've never been. No, I'm not really going to Argentina. The Appalachian Trail. For real.

When I return I hope to have a tremendous batch of photographs. I have a new backpacking tent and a new sleeping bag (bought them a year ago) that I've never used. So I'll be breaking those in. Lightest of both that I've ever owned. The tent weighs a tad over two pounds. I'm getting way too old to lug heavy stuff over the ridges. Fortunately, the techies have been busy creating lighter weight backpacking equipment since I started in 1973. The first long backpacking trip I ever took my pack weighed 63 pounds. And I only weighed 185 in those days. I was carrying one third of my body weight on my back! I don't even want to think about it.

Here are a few mountain memories from recent years past:


Mount Pisgah, North Carolina

Beartown State Park, West Virginia.

Allegheny Front, West Virginia.

Grayson Highlands, Virginia.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bob,

Have a fun time and safe trip brother. See you next Wednesday.

-Lee

James Robert Smith said...

Thanks! See you on Wednesday!

sage said...

Enjoy the trail! I came to your site from a "shout-out" at Ultralighter's blog... Lately, I've been trying to recollect my memories of hiking the AT and have, over the past few years, written a couple dozen blog posts on the journey.