77 Thousand Steps – VA Triple Crown and Dolly Sods

Last updated on: June 16, 2026 at 9:35 pm by Rob Giannamore

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77 Thousand Steps – VA Triple Crown and Dolly Sods 2026-06-16T21:35:34-04:00 Rob Giannamore

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Overlooking the Catawba Valley from Tinker's cliff

A Journey Through Peaks and the High Country

On June 5, 2026, I embarked on my annual backpacking adventure, this year with my 19-year-old daughter. This was a special one, because it will probably be my last chance to do this with her before she gets really busy with her education and then career. Our trip was jam-packed with adventure:

June 5 was the New River Gorge bridge walk – we would walk underneath the 900 foot bridge that goes over the New River Gorge.

June 6-9 would be a backcountry trip that would cover what is known as the Virginia Triple Crown, a section of the Appalachian trail that has the features known as Dragons Tooth, McAfee Knob and Tinker’s Cliff

June 9 – 10 would be spent in West Virginia exploring the Dolly Sods Wilderness.

Nine months in the making, as with all my trips, nothing truly goes as planned and things started changing back in March as we noticed that water was going to be problem. By April, the original plan of completing the Triple Crown Loop was abandoned to focus on the thirtyish mile section that encompassed the main features of the triple crown. As we got into May, water sources continued to dry up and two weeks out from the trip, water sources were a real problem and it was decided that we would take four liters of water each day. When we got to our hotel on Friday, the plan was further adjusted to get off the trail on day one to stay at a hostel where water would be plentiful. By Saturday, the plan had changed again to stay at a hostel a second night, slack pack day two, Tinkers Cliff and McAfee Knob and shuttle back to our car on day three. My daughter does not have the extensive experience that I have with low water and endurance and she was already feeling the strain on day one. I felt that there was no point turning Type II fun into Type III.

A Time to Reflect

As with all my yearly trips, it is a time of reflection and a time to get away from life for a moment. My birthday always happens during this break and this year, I chose Jack Kerouac’s book “Dharma Bums” to keep me company in camp.

I was struck by these words by Jack Kerouac on June 7th:

The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify(by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.

For all its sprawl, Kerouac’s sentence captures something I feel every time I’m in the woods. There is something sacred there, something ancient and familiar. So many of my most formative memories are tied to time outdoors: long car rides with my parents as a child, watching my dad spend what felt like an endless amount of time trying to get the perfect photograph of an animal or a landscape, and later, dating my wife and then taking our own children into the woods. My life has been marked by these moments.

Another Trip Around the Sun

June 9th was my birthday and it marked the beginning of the last year of my forties. I always feel a bit melancholic around my birthday, but this year was particularly poignant. My eldest had just taken her NCLEX nursing exam and was expecting to pass (she did and is now a registered nurse), the daughter I was with would be soon moving on to bigger and better things in her education and my other kids, too, are getting to the point that they really don’t need us. Both my parents and my wife’s parents are advancing in age and showing those signs of aging. I, too, with some of the long Covid issues I have experienced, have shifted the course of the last five years of my life. I have packed a lot in the last forty-nine years. It feels intimidating knowing what is ahead, the reality of only having maybe 15-20 more years of work ahead of me and then what?

One of the thoughts I have settled on as I have approached 50 is whether or not I was going to run a 50 miler next year. Something weird happened to my body after getting the Covid shot and having COVID-19. I am not sure what, and I have spent several years now trying to figure it out, spending a chunk of money in the process. I was even close to hiring a coach, but the last two trips this year have taught me to just let go. In Buddhism, they say we suffer because we cling and rather than worrying about turning on the endurance machine again for a 50 miler next year, I think I am just going to live my life and do what I can.

Kerouac took me back to my roots this week, prompting me to think deeply about the lessons I have gleaned from both Eastern and Western monasticism. Nothing truly will change if I let go. And life will be happier just the same.

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