David Gray's video: Savage Gulf SNA Tennessee Backpacking - March 2019

To kick off the 2019 season the dogs and I teamed up with Carl, who I met through these YouTube videos, and travelled down to southern Tennessee to hike the Savage Gulf State Natural Area, which lies about halfway between Nashville and Chattanooga, 15 miles or so north of I-24. Strangely, despite quite a bit of research I’ve done over the years on backpacking destinations I’d never heard of Savage Gulf before Carl suggested it as a hiking location for our first adventure together. He described it as a blend between the Red River Gorge, Big South Fork, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Having now hiked it, I’d say that Carl’s description was spot on. Having two cars made the logistics of the area quite a bit easier to manage since we had our own ‘built in’ shuttle capability. The area isn’t all that well suited to multi-day loop hikes, but the possibilities for 3-day or 4-day point-to-point hikes are abundant. We chose to start at the Savage Gulf Ranger Station on the east side of the area and do a 3-day, 23-mile point-to-point hike to the Stone Door Ranger Station on the west side of the area. It turned out to be a perfect distance for three days, though the 2nd day along the ‘Connector Trail’ proved to be quite a challenge. I found Savage Gulf to be a great place for backpacking! The trails are abundant, varied, well-marked, and extremely well maintained. The topography and vegetation are diverse, and the views from the canyon rims are exceptional (though a bit scary when you’re traveling with two dogs!). And there are numerous campsites all of which allow (require) you to reserve a specific site in advance – this can be both a blessing and a pain, but at least you know exactly where you’ll be staying each night which eliminates the potential stress of late-day ‘campsite hunting’. Oh, and the campsites all have privies and are located near a water source. I’ve decided to call Savage Gulf a ‘hidden gem’ because it was an unknown destination to me prior to our hike, plus it turned out to be an excellent kickoff trip for the 2019 backpacking season. Oh, and it didn’t hurt that we had absolutely perfect backpacking weather for all three days. For those who have watched my other videos this one is done in the same style - about an hour in length, intended to bring the audience along for the 'ride', and with a still picture slide show with music at the end. If you just have a few minutes skip to the end and enjoy the pictures. Equipment / Gear List: Still Camera: Nikon D810 with Nikkor 20mm f1.8 lens Video Cameras: Canon Vixia G40 with Rode Stereo Videomic Pro Video Editing Software: Vegas Pro 15 HDR Software: Aurora HDR 2018 Video Stabilization Software: Mercalli SAL v4 Pack: ZPacks Arc Blast 52l Shelter: Nemo Meta2P Slide show music - Acoustic Guitar 1 by Jason Shaw, AudioNautix. www.audionautix.com