Date: 2022-09-23
From: Pass Mountain Hut

To: Rock Spring Hut
Miles today: 15.3
Weather: broken clouds

I am 43 years old and, after 116 days of sustained exercise, am in the best physical condition of my life (at least for walking). Jasper is 15 and still has some years to go before his physical prime. Yet it is undeniable that he could smoke me on an extended day of backpacking. We are very evenly matched but a keen observer would be able to pick out the laggard.Today was a day of climbing. No steep climbs nor any that were particularly long. They were steep and long enough to begin to feel their pull. Several times today I fell in behind Jasper, him in front and me behind. It was a cold morning with the warm sun on the lee side of the ridge battling the breezy shade on the western side. The temps spurred us both to a brisk pace. He would fall into an uphill pace that I estimate was over 3.5 mph and could, perhaps, have topped 4 mph. We would walk like that for a mile and a half or two, gain the top, and then slacken the pace as we headed downhill. Those last few hundred feet of climb would see him slowly begin to pull away, never out of conversation range, but he only needed another half mile of the same terrain to put 50 yards on me. When the roles were reversed and I was leading, he could match me step for step. Last night was a sleepless one. It was a cold night in the low 40s but the wind, forecasted as 12-15 mph, was freight-training through the treetops in shifts all night long. Falling trees and limbs were at the forefront of my mind throughout the night. A stick did fall on the boys (new) tent and punctured the roof before sliding off the top. I was able to patch it when we got to camp this evening.I imagine that every treetop and limb in the forest could be assigned a number: the speed, in mph, that it would take to break that part of the tree off. I imagine there wouldn¢t be as many 3s since a 3 mph wind is so common; all those limbs get cleaned out nearly daily. Branches with a 15 seem like they would be much more common. A 15 mph wind comes along much less frequently and so, leaves time in between windstorms for limbs to weaken and become vulnerable. Also, a 15 mph wind takes down all limbs with a score of 15 or lower. I¢ve thought a bit more about this today and I¢m not sure if my logic is airtight*. But it was what drove my sleeplessness last night. There were more limbs falling than I was comfortable with. The path today was an old one in many places with the fingerprints of the 1930s CCC all over it. On the slopes of the mountains it climbed it had been painstakingly benched, graded, and switchbacked so as to be always 3 feet wide, level sided-to-side, and gently graded even over the course of winding, 2 mile climbs of 1000 feet. This workmanship is evident on the profile maps. The easy, engineered grades have a distinctly different profile than the ones that take a more direct line to the top or to the gap. To engineer trail like this often requires stone walls on the downhill side to shore up the trail and leave it level. Culverts, water bars, and thoughtful lines through the terrain have made the last 40 miles of trail very enjoyable.We left Pass Mountain Hut after a nerve-wracking night into a cold and still breezy trail. The sun was throwing weak rays through the trees as we descended to Thornton Gap. A trailhead parking lot with bathrooms offered warmth, hot water for sink baths, and drinking water.We climbed to Mary¢s rock and onward to The Pinnacle and then to Stony Man. The view to the west remains the same for much of the walk though the park. The view to the east is exceedingly rare.Downhill from Stony Man is the Skyland Resort. We arrived around 1:00 and took seats in the dining room. An overpriced hamburger is still a hamburger. Joni, Baxter, and I ordered the Angus Burger. Grayson did the kids grilled cheese sandwich. Jasper made the pro move and ordered 2 kids cheeseburgers, each 4 ounces. For the same price as our 6oz Angus Burgers he got 8oz of burger, double fries, and none of the veggies he didn¢t want. Grayson ordered a second grilled cheese before he was done with the first.We spent 2 hours at Skyland drinking coffee, eating treats, and relaxing. Joni called Jaspers doctor and got more antibiotics prescribed for his toe. It¢s not hurting him but we are keenly aware that it hasn¢t yet healed. It looks gnarly on the worst days and painful in the best. I do think it¢s moving towards healing as the toenail continues to grow. I attempted to snag a room at the resort but could only get the clerk down to $303 - way too rich for our type. It¢s a Friday night on the first weekend of fall; I wasn¢t expecting much. We headed south again about 3:00 and walked 7 easy miles to Rock Spring Hut. We set up in a small meadow just north of the side trail to the hut. Baxter and I walked down to Rock Spring and discovered a steady flow coming from under a giant boulder. It was the freshest and clearest water we¢ve seen since the Sidney Tappan campsite in the 100 mile wilderness. We had ramen and chicken for dinner. A spike buck visited us in our meadow campsite as we were doing our evening chores. He sneaked up on us and skirted the edge of thee meadow, all the while checking us out. He walked from his usual path into the meadow, around the eastern half of it just inside the wood line, and continues in his routine path on the other side. We cinched up camp and settled down for what we expect to be the coldest night we¢ve had on the trail.  *my intuition says that there would likely be a pretty even distribution of numbers throughout the forest. While smaller limbs with a label of 3 are ¢created¢ more often they are also ¢cleaned out¢ more often. Contrawise, limbs with a 15 get created less often but are cleaned out less often, giving more time for 15s to get created. Is the distribution of limb scores in a forest uniformly distributed or is the distribution skewed towards one end?