Monday, October 6, 2025.
Base weight with some cold weather gear is 21.87 lbs and full weight with 1.75 liters of water and 2.5 days food is basically 30 lbs. Carrying my Osprey Atmos 65 pack and using my Durston X-mid tent as usual.
Ed and I are leaving this afternoon to hike Shenandoah for 8-10 days. We will be hiking all of the AT through Shenandoah National Park. At the present time, all the revenue generating facilities in the park are open even with the Federal Government Shutdown. That includes camp grounds, camp sites, and waysides. That is critical as we will plan to resupply from the camp grounds and waysides very 2 days or so.
One bit challenge will be water. Fall is normally dry in that area, but to make things worse this has been a bad drought year. We have at least one 2-day water carry. I am not looking forward to carrying 2-days worth of water (almost 10lbs).
I spent several hours getting all my gear ready for our 8-10 day NOBO hike from Waynesboro, VA to Front Royal, VA. I had to tweak my gear loadout for the cold weather as well as a few lessons learned from this summer.
I finished my new Web Site for blogging last night. This new waste is much easier for the readers as well as much simpler and faster for me to post to. I moved over most of my old content and am looking t forward to seeing how my blogging goes over the next 2 weeks.
Ed will pick me up in Poolesville around 4:00pm and then drive us about 2 hours to Front Royal, VA. We are staying Monday night at a B&B / Hostel that we have used before. We will leave Ed’s car at the hostel, shuttle to Waynesboro, VA Tuesday morning, and then hike back to Front Royal.
The weather looks great other than a chance of rain on Wednesday. Cool, clear, and breezy weather. Perfect fall hiking weather.
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