With the weather cooling off and winter fast approaching, we decided to take a quick backpacking trip over the weekend. We decided we’d hike from Carvers Gap, go in a couple of miles, camp, and turn around and go home the next day.

One thing I was really excited about getting to see was the famous Over Mountain Shelter. I’d seen so many photos from weekend backpackers to thru hikers and since it was so close, we made the stop for lunch there.

The shelter was shut down right before our trip for being structurally unsound but it was still a very nice spot. I was impressed that the privy had such an…open view lol

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Once we finished lunch, we continued with no definite destination. Our main goal was just to hike until we found an appropriate camping spot (following Leave No Trace Principles).

One thing we did not expect was that once we left the Over mountain shelter, running water was a lot harder to find. We used the AWOL guide to look for it but most of the water we came up on was dry. Thankfully we’d filtered plenty at the Over mountain Shelter so it wasn’t a concern, but would have been if we’d wanted to make this a several day hike.

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Using the AWOL AT guide we found a nice place to set up our hammocks, still no water close by but we were planning to turn around the very next day.

That night we had a barred owl couple chattering back and forth which of course was magical 🙂

The next morning I hiked to a clearing so that I could capture some sunrise before we turned and headed back home.

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Once we made it back to the car, we decided to drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway to catch some beautiful sunset views.

It was a perfect weekend and definitely fuels my want to hike the Appalachian Trail

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For this trip I decided to only bring my film camera.

Camera: Pentax SP II
Lens: 50mm lens
Film: Expired
Developed: The DarkRoom Lab California