4h00 alarm rings
I didn’t snoozed it, I just switched it of 🙂

At 6h00 I woke up and at 6h30 I was on my way, only 2 minutes later I was about to see the only human for the whole day, a mid 60 guy who had setup his camp only a few yards from mine.

After an hour of walking I passed the road to parsdise cafe. I just crossed it and contiuned my hike.

 

After an endless 8 mile walk uphill I had to fill up my water and goot half a mile down to a pipe which had water. On the way down I almost left my backpack up the hill and only took my waterbottles but luckily I didn’t.

Just before I arrived I thought that if there was really fresh water, that there must be animals drinking from thaz source too. There was not even time to finish the thought and I saw it, drinking of the leaking water from the ground.

This majestic rattlesnake 😀

 

Those are the moments I’m happy that I carry my heavy camera and the diffrent lenses. No way to get such a shot without getting yourself in some serious trouble.

 

 

About 5 minutes into the shooting (had to unpack the whole backpag to get the right lense) it disappeared into a bush.

I got my water and tried to get a few more shots of the snake in the bush but they where not brilliant. The whole getting there, taking pictures and back up took me over an hour…

Another 1200feet / 400m of elevation later I had my lunchbreak under a big tree. Good that noone was around me because I must have screamed from the bottom of my lungs when this happened:

 

 

 

Later in the afternoon I was looking at two lizards and was daydreaming a rattle right next to me got me jumping like I never imagined I would be able and I fell backwards a few steps down the hill.

A huge rattlesnake behind a stone right on the trail. It could definetly have bitten me, I was more than in stricking distance! I was a lot closer than I ever wanted to come those animals! I rattleled furiously for at least a minut and I was to lucky to be alive that I was not able to take a picture…

But I have to say, those animals know very well what they are capable of. The first one saw no danger in me and didn’t rattled nor got in the S formation to attack. This one could have bitten me but choose not to, they apparently don’t bite out of pure wish to kill. They know I am to big for them to eat, so there is no reason to waste their venom on my. Even if they bite, 2/3 bites in California are dry bites. They do bite but do not inject venom every time.

 

 

I was happy to get out of the forest fast and because of the fire closure I had to go of the trail to get to Idyllwild. The way down from 7000feet/2300m to 5000feet/1700m was not easy and it was to going to be too late to hitchhike into town.

I even put on my Flip-flops because my feet were hurting but I didn’t helped. I set up camp aside the dead-end road, ate, watched “into the wild” (at least the beginning ) and fell asleep.

Tomorrow I have 2 more miles to go to the highway and hitchhile to Idyllwild. And I will take the rest of the day of, staying there, getting a shower, my resupply and do some laundry 🙂