Date: 2004-04-20
From: Stan Murray Shelter

To: Cherry Gap Shelter
Miles today: 20.0
Weather: overcast clouds

Roan High Knob11:30AM, 4/21 - Somewhere south of Beauty SpotI set three personal records today:Highest Elevation (Roan High Knob Shelter, 6285') - This is just 3' lower than Mt Washington, and one of just a handful of 6000' peaks on the Trail. I think the next is in the Smokies.Longest Distance Covered (20.0 mi) - This long distance in one day is partly a result of me fooling myself yesterday. At the beginning of the day I was thinking of walking all the way to Roan High Knob Shelter, which would have given me 15, 15, 16 mi days in to Erwin.When I met Energy Miser yesterday at 1 PM in the gap between Hump and Little Hump, I asked him about how long it would take to get to the top. He told me he had left at 8:30 in the morning.With lightning speed like a computer, my steel trap mathematical mind flashed through the following calculation: It took him 5 and 1/2 hours to get here. That was downhill, I am going up, so it will take me 6 1/2, getting me there at 7:30. I will probably take 1/2 for lunch, and factoring in chating with hikers, I would get to the top well after 8, tired and with dinner still to be made.I didn't want to squeeze the end of my day so much, being my usual free time, so I decided to hang out at the Overmountain Shelter and eat dinner in the afternon, as I reported yesterday.I did the same calculation twice more - as I was stopping at Overmountain and as I was leaving. Always with the same result.Only this morning after I had climbed nearly to the elevation of Roan and was thinking 'Boy, this is going faster than I had expected!' did I go over the calculation carefully and realized that from 8:30 to 1 is only 4 1/2 hrs, not 5 1/2. If I had examined my assumption about 5 1/2 hours yesterday, I would have almost certainly climbed to the top yesterday. (I am making no judgment at this time which choice would have been BETTER. That would be the subject of an entirely different discussion.)[I don't remember if I have explicitly mentioned this in this journal, but a major theme in my ponderings is an exploration of expectations and the role they play in my life. Unexamined assumptions is one form of expectation.In this journal I have fallen victim to unexamined assumptions at least once. In my word puzzle about outdoor equipment I had assumed that the brand name for one of the more popular camp shoes was TEVI (I don't own them, I use Crocs), but I think the brand is actually TEVA. Mea Culpa. More about the puzzle in a day or so.]; Most Hikers Met - Today I met at least 39 hikers:Grady; Theo; TT; Just Do It; Bighorn Wanderer; KP; Circuit Rider; Sherlock; DC (Dark Cloud); KP (a different one); Uhr-Man; Cajun Man; Moonstone; Little Bit; Mellow Yellow; Eagle Eye; Blue Bell (from Texas); Adventure; Sunset; The Rat Pack (Ward, Jr, Dart, Big Foot); Mumbles; Easy Does It; Josh & father Matt; Chef; Marzipan; Yoda & dog Lucy; Berkeley Bill; Close Call & Carter; The Roman Noodles (Beef & Seafood); and Mainsail.Tonight I am staying with Pookah; RB; and Doug.I did look at my natural surroundings a bit between hikers. The most noticeable new thing I saw was a profusion of a kind of small wildflower at high altitudes. They have five petals which are a light lavendar, ranging from a near pink (rare) to almost white (most common). The sweet-looking flower is about 1" in diameter and stands 3 or 4" above the ground, often with more than one flower per stalk. The leaves are a pointy oval, about 1 cm wide and 3 or 4 cm long. Can someone identify this for me? I will have a picture up in this website, but only in a couple of weeks. I also saw lots of chipmunks or ground squirrels, two of them while I was taking pictures of the flowers, but I could never catch them with the camera.See you on down the Trail