Date: 2005-04-20
From: Standing Bear Farm

To: Walnut Mountain Shelter
Miles today: 20.3
Weather: clear sky

7:30 PMI got up really early in my cabin, packed and ran over to the re-supply shed and got an apple and a Pepsi. I went over to use the phone to call Christine, I asked her to send me some Spandex shorts and another flashlight via Priority Mail today. The reason I'm changing flashlights is because these AA, LED flashlights are nice, compact and light but the batteries don't last too long. I'm going to switch over to my Lightweight 2000. I was on the Trail by 7:15, the first one out hiking, which means I broke the spider webs with my face for a few hours..A couple of hundred yards from the beginning of the Trail, there was a dead rattlesnake maybe 3 feet long in the middle of the Trail with a puncture wound in his belly. I think one of the hikers must have stabbed with his pole. I've actually been surprised by the absence of snakes. Where are all the big black snakes that were laying in the roots of blown down trees before? I used to see those a couple of times a day. Not a single one so far. Only saw one orange salamander so far, too.Today was a see-saw day. It started with a continuous uphill for over 4 miles, starting at Standing Bear all the way to Snowbird Mountain. Changes in elevation from 1,850 to over 4,200 feet in that 4 miles. What sucks about leaving town is that, every time you leave, it's uphill.From 4,200 feet back to 2,800 at Groundhog Creek and then all the way to Max Patch which is 4,600 feet. Over on the way to Max Patch, you have a little place called Brown Gap, which is a steep downhill. I would rate the uphill the going northbound as one of the nastiest so far.From Max Patch, at 4,200 feet, all the way down to 2,900 again, and back up to 4,300 at Walnut Mountain Shelter. Very much up and down, very physical. The uphill at the end of the day sucked, my 20 mile day ended with a long climb and a whimper. Some of the reasons I like to get out early in the morning is that the deer haven't run away yet and the fog is still sitting in the valleys like a lake. It was like that this morning. On top of Snow Bird Mountain there's a 360 degree view with a weird FAA antenna. It kind of looks like a blunt nosed aqua green rocket. Along the way I ran into Vocal, Norway, and a gal from Montana that they are hiking with. They camped out in the woods last night. I caught up to them and we ended up hiking to Max Patch together.   Max Patch is this big ,grassy, huge hill that pops out in the middle of the woods. It's unbelievable.When we got up to the Trail there, there was this guy named Spiff, who was doing trail magic. He had pizza and beer, apples, carrots, strawberries, and some other things. I grabbed the last Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, a Pepsi, some pepperoni pizza and a carrot.   I took my shirt off and basked in the sun with some other hikers who were enjoying the incredible sight.   Origami was there, he and Sam had a fight over food and she took off. It's tough being a couple on the Trail. I hope it works out for them.The gnats were out in full force today, that added to my protein intake. I walked a total of 10 hours today with that 1 hour break at Max Patch. When I walk that much every day a couple of things happen in my head, one of them is that I zone out, don't notice time passing, then I notice that the sun is setting and it's time to stop. Part of today was like that. Some times I play math games, when I'm walking a lot and I have time to think, I start thinking of rate of ascent and my speed, going by the book, landmarks and the book's mileage. I'm pretty good now at being able to tell whether I'm doing a 2 or 3.5 MPH pace. The figures I came up with were: Going up to Snowbird I was doing 2,400 feet at 20 feet a minute, about 4.3 miles. That averages to about 2.1 miles an hour going uphill the whole time. One way to compare that is to think about climbing a 240 story building at the rate of 2 floors per minute, which is pretty good when you have a 30 pound pack on your back. I saw a lot of squirrels this morning. I also noticed that the poison ivy is coming up a lot, time to be careful of what you brush up against and where you sit.I walked out without sock liners on this morning, I usually have a pair of socks and a pair of liners on. I was starting to develop a blister on my right outside heel, it wants to pop out and I was thinking maybe there was too much movement in my foot. I took the liners out the shoe feels too big now, but the blister didn't get bothered.My knees, that did so well in the Smokies, did a lot of talking to me today on the down hills. I'm just achy all over. I'm sitting on a log and every time I get up I look like an old man, holding my back, creaking and moaning.   I should probably start to back off doing the 20's. Today was the 5th 20 mile day.   Maybe its a good time to take a couple of days off to do a little recovery. It's really quiet on Walnut Mountain today, no one is in the shelter. There's only 4 hikers here, everyone is tented and the tents are widely spaced apart, closest one to me is 100 yards away. I don't know if anyone else is going to come in, it's almost 8 o'clock.   I'm going to clean up my dinner dishes and hang my bear bag and crawl in bed.