Chill Backpacking Trip (6.5 mi one day, maybe 5.5 the next day)

OVERVIEW

Okay I’ve finally had a minute to pick out where we’re going. It’s a 5.75 mile circuit hike called Cold Mountain. It’s just off of route 60 going west, 9 miles past the Blue Ridge parkway. We’ll hike in 1.2 miles to a place the book says “A grand camp could be made on the large, flat area underneath stately old oaks at 1.2 miles.” Then we’ll put our packs and stuff down, set up camp, then go on the rest of the circuit hike (5.75 mi) all the way around the loop back to our camp.
So we’ll stay the night, then in the morning we can decide what to do. There is another 5 mile circuit hike (called Mount Pleasant) whose trail head is the in the same parking lot as the Cold Mountain hike, so we can go back to the parking lot, throw our stuff in the cars, and then go on a real nice day hike…but we can decide about Sunday that morning.

Outdoors at UVa provides:

Sat. dinner, Sun. breakfast, gas money, and if you need: big backpack, sleeping bag and pad, tent, and a seat in a car.

You must bring:

Sat and Sun lunch/snack food, at least one liter of water (I’ll be carrying at least two), solid footwear (I’ll have boots, sneakers will probably work fine though), socks (they might get wet, ya never know!), bug spray (probably won’t need this time of year though), toliet paper, flashlight!!, proper clothes (the low is in the 40’s, but it should be 70-ish during the day, and it could rain…weather.com can’t really predict 10 days ahead). Try to bring as little cotton as possible, because wet cotton sucks!
(Check the link for a full listing of typical backpacking trips)