Date: 2011-05-04
From: Knot Maul Branch Shelter

To: Jenkins Shelter
Miles today: 19.0
Weather: broken clouds

(In which I contemplate elevation and slope profiles)In the shelter I meet Shutter, Guitar and The Roman Prophet, all lying in their sleeping bags, relaxing away from the rain. Shutter carries a Sony NEX-3 and, hearing the forecast, has been hanging out in the shelter since 2pm. Guitar and The Roman Prophet are hiking to raise money for their camp ministry. Guitar, who finally sent his guitar home in Damascus, is 19 years old with long bangs that cover his eyes and a peach fuzz soul patch, and lies in his sleeping bag with an earbud from his iPod in one ear. He hasn't met a lot of other younger hikers on the trail, he says. I tell him about Chili, Coach and Big Ben, and Trilobite. When I get to Trilobite he sits upright, suddenly interested. "Woah, there's a 19 year old chick on the trail? Is she hot?!"* * *Nearly everyone I've met in the last few days has a Jay story to tell, almost always an unpleasant one. I take comfort that everyone who's met him seems to be ahead of him -- whatever his hourly mileage, his weekly mileage seems slower than most. His situation reminds me of a hiker by the name of Ward Leonard, whom I read about in some of the older AT accounts. Ward was by all accounts one of the most phenomenal hikers to ever hike the AT, at one time holding the records for fastest unsupported thru-hike, most thru-hikes in a year (three) and most total thru-hikes. But like Jay, Ward had severe social problems and managed to anger or frighten nearly everyone he encountered, year after year.Ward was eventually banned from the AT -- no single authority can easily do this, but it seems the local authorities collectively got fed up with his behavior. But even before his lifetime ban, he ran into problems as a result of the hundreds of enemies he made on the trail. If he left any gear unattended when he went to get water or go to the privy, he'd return to find it missing, and no matter how many people there where in the shelter, nobody would have seen anything. Jay, I'm told, never leaves anything unattended, but I think that he will still have a hard time hiking around people he consistently mistreats.* * *The rain strengthens, but the thunderstorm never arrives, at least not near the shelter. The temperature drops overnight, however, and Shutter's watch reads 45 degrees in the morning. The day stays cold with on and off sprinkles. I pass a viewpoint and stop to see the view and check the mileage. According to the book, the viewpoint is 0.9 miles from the dirt road I crossed three hours ago, and I'm not sure if I've somehow been going far slower than I thought or if the guidebook is messing with me.In the final descent of the day, the trail decides to up for a few hundred yards and the elevation profile, separate from the guidebook, seems to have gone off the rails as well. I've heard a few angry comments on elevation profile inaccuracies, but this is the first time I've found any discrepancy. I'm not upset, simply befuddled, and coming on the heals of the guidebook confusion, I wonder if there has been some trail rerouting.What would be even more helpful than the elevation profile, I think, is the first derivative of the elevation profile, the slope profile. Sawtooth-like small up and downs, common today on the trail, show up as flat on the elevation profile but would register as jagged up and down spikes on the slope profile. A short uphill in the middle of a downhill makes little difference in the overall elevation but would stand out as a large brief spike. An elevation profile answers the question, "How high above sea level am I?", which is not always obvious or of direct interest to a hiker. A slope profile, on the other hand, answers the question, "Am I going up or down?", which is usually easier to tell for locating oneself and of more interest. But seeing as I don't usually even consult the profile anymore, it's little more than an idle thought.The trail eventually matches back up with the guidebook and the elevation profile, and I get into the shelter at 5pm, my earliest non-nero in a while. I would go on, but the next shelter isn't for 14 miles and the skies seem to threaten more rain for tonight. The showers start back up just after I've finished dinner, gotten water and hung my bear bag, and I retreat to my sleeping bag in the shelter glad that I did not go further.