Editor’s note: Next week we unveil our first half GetBackpacking! plans for 2022. This week, for the yet-to-be-convinced of the joys of backcountry adventure, we look at the “why” — Why we do this?
Some folks, even avid hikers, have a knee-jerk reaction to backpacking. To the perceived discomfort, the perceived inconvenience, the perceived difficulty. Backpacking’s sometimes negative image is, in our opinion, a perception problem.
Editor’s note: This is a piece we run annually around this time. It has been tweaked, updated and massaged.
When it comes to fall color, outdoors types take the changing of the leaves pretty seriously.
How seriously?
Virginia has a fall foliage hotline — 800.424.5683 — that you can call for the latest breaking fall color news. Operators standing by; in our book, that’s quite serious. And, curiously, quite practical.
We’ve been thinking about some of our favorite mountain places to explore come fall, and realized that there are a variety of ways we love to explore them. There’s the day hike: spending a day to see as much as possible, then heading home. There’s the basecamp trip: Either establishing camp in a campground or hiking in a short distance in full pack and setting up camp, then doing day hikes from there. Or, there’s the point-to-point backpack trip. Since we all explore differently, we thought, why not look at all three options? So today, we do.
It is the season that inspires our great philosophers. Friedrich Nietzsche, for instance, wrote: “Notice that autumn is more the season of the soul than of nature.”
Or this, from a more contemporary purveyor of percipient thought:
“It’s the first day of autumn! A time of hot chocolatey mornings, and toasty marshmallow evenings, and, best of all, leaping into leaves!”
Fall is prime backpacking season in the Southeast. Warm days, cool nights, cloudless skies and lots of autumnal color make this the season to explore the backcountry — and spend the night in the most remote locations. If you’re a backpacker with some experience, we’ve got several trips for you this fall. And if you’re not a backpacker but want to be, we’ve got you covered as well.
