PCT day 28 - mile 593 to mile 620 [Snakes!]

May 17, 2022

"If bobcats can live in Iowa, they can live anywhere. Iowa is like a ecological desert". Shower Shakedown.

Today can be described by one word: SNAKES!

The begging of the day was pretty standard, Big Owl decided to wrap up her camp early as she was low on water and next stream was 10 miles away uphill, so she made a lot of noise in the darkness around 4am waking me up in the process. I didn't mind it as I done the very same thing to other people before. I actually managed to fall asleep when she left and started to pack up around 5:30am.

Next section was not only uphill but also with a lot of old, burned trees that fell on the trail, I had to manoeuvre around them to get through. Few hours later and after getting past the 600 miles marker I was at the water source, Big Owl was there with few other hikers. I topped up my bottles, had a cinnamon pop tart, a 'fun size snickers' and went on to the next water point (the joys of walking through the desert).

At this source water was plentiful, so I decided to give my legs a wash in the puddle it created. I had lunch here as it was nearly 1pm - today it was (like nearly everyday) tortilla wraps with tuna.

Since I had signal (T-Mobile I went with here has been terrible with signal on trail so far) I called Triple Crown Outfitters in Kennedy Meadows and ordered a bear canister and new shoes, I will be able to pick them up from the store once I arrive at mile 700 in few days. After I finished placing my order the road in front of me has been barricaded by yellow and white (potentially poisonous) snake, it didn't want to move so I had to walk around it.

Around 4pm I stopped by a water cache next to a road, I sat down to have a short break, right next to me sat two families one with a small child just over a year old. It only had a t-shirt on and kept on running bare feet back and forth along the trail I just came from, parents were completely oblivious to it. At that moment this thought came to my head, what if there was a rattle snake nearby, did those parents have no common sense?! I finished my break, and went on. Didn't walk 10 minutes away from where I was sitting and guess what? Of course the not-so-friendly rattling scared the shit out of me. It was the second rattlesnake I encountered so far, all coiled, angry and ready to pounce. It was younger than the one I saw before, but apparently the younger they are the more keen they are to bite. After 30 seconds stand off it uncoiled and started to crawl towards me, so I threw some sand at it until it changed direction. Think of the devil and doth he shall appear eh?

It was getting late so I decided to stop at the next decent camp spot the only problem was that I was going through a wind corridor, very open space with few sheltered areas. Then I came across this big Joshua tree with hundreds of cicadas sitting on it, they were making fabulous noise so I decided to set a camp here, but soon enough wind changed my mind as it nearly broke my tent in half. So I carried on.

Of course another snake was waiting for me along the way, this time it was black and white, it coiled and gave me a little rattle when it saw me (don't think it was poisonous, it just developed this tiny rattle as defence mechanism to look scary, or so I hoped) it quickly uncoiled and ran away I didn't even have time to take out the camera.

I was really tired at this point, it was a long day and nearly 6:30pm. I spotted fairly well protected from wind point with many trees, someone was camping there already but it looked big enough to accommodate more tents.

I found a good spot and started to set up in a fairly wind protected place. As I was putting one of the last stakes in I noticed that I have a neighbour not further than one metre away. Guess what it was.. of course, a bloody rattlesnake! At this point I concluded that the universe is trying to tell me something, so I gave up and decided to embrace it. I had my dinner, two puffs of the joint I got from Oblivious (to ease out muscular pains of course) and went to bed.

Sweet dreams my deadly reptile friend, I hope you will be gone when I wake up.

First angry rattlesnake of the day: