blakhawk wrote:
And when your done with that list start chasing the 4,000ers in wild n wonderful West Virginia....HA!!! Ive been living in western pa the last twelve years and do a lot of off trail here in pa and dubvee. Im not a list chaser tho,but have done a few of those. Best time of year is when the foliage is down. The toughest off trail place ive been to anywhere in the lower 48 is west virginia hands down. Colorado doesnt even come close to what we have here out east in the laurel thickets. The spruce n rhododendron/laurel highlands of west virginia is nasty nasty nasty...and some of it is literally impenetrable without a hatchet or machete. Im a sucker for sufferfests,n a glutton for punishment,and for some reason i love plowing thru them....lol.
Seconded. I once took my girlfriend on a "shortcut" in Dolly Sods (it was from the viewpoint across the valley from Lions Head down to the Red Creek Trail, in case you're familiar with the area). It's about 1/3 mi and down 600', and it'd save us about 2 miles on the trail, so I figured it was a good idea. I'd done it once with my brother and we managed to stay mostly in a rocky gully, which wasn't so bad. With the lady though, I picked a really bad line, right the through rhodos. I couldn't find the gully for the life of me, so we just kept going down because I knew eventually we'd hit the trail. It was so dense we were on our hands and knees for most of the time (or hands and butt, more accurately), climbing over the rocks at a 35% grade. It was raining lightly to make things just a little more fun. Took us 45 minutes to catch the trail... some shortcut. She made me swear I'd never take her bushwhacking again.
Lucky for me, I got her to go off trail on our next trip to Spruce Knob, until I almost stepped on a rattler while traipsing through waist high grass. But that's another story.