Day 17 May 23, 2017

• Daily miles 22
• Total miles 304
• Hiked from 5:15 am to 6:00 pm with some substantial breaks

(When you are watching this or any other videos that I took, you may wonder what the annoying rattling noise is in the back ground.  Best as I can figure is that it is my trekking poles which I stuff under my left arm when I take a video.  I did not notice this until I got home and started watching the videos for the first time.)

Today I crossed 300 miles, met a rattler and sweltered in the heat.

Got up at my usual 4:45 am and was walking shortly thereafter.  Hard to really call it walking though as I just was not in a groove for the first couple of hours.  Such a shame because the trail was gently downhill and had a great track.  Some days are just like that.  I stopped and had second breakfast with a few other hikers at the main crossing of Holcomb Creek.  That seemed to perk me up a bit.  

Early morning hiking scenery 

I was cruising a bit better in the late morning, heading for Deep Creek Canyon and basically minding my own business.  Then, from about 5 feet behind me, I hear a telltale rattling sound.  I look back and not 12 inches off the trail, slightly hidden by a bush is a rattlesnake.  He had actually let me go past before issuing his iconic, very scary warning sound.  Well that got my head right back into the hike!

Rattler beside trail

Made it to the Deep Creek bridge just before noon.  Deep Creek is quite a substantial stream with lots of shady trees on its banks.  It had been very hot all morning (90F) so I took about an hour to cool down.  Then I headed out down the trail which hangs on the west side of quite a steep canyon.  Within 3 miles I was hot, very hot.  And I do not mean hot in the "Oh baby you are so hot" sense.  It was stinking hot out.  I reached an unexpected side trail back down to the creek and met up with four other hikers where we all waited out the heat for two hours.  I even had my first on trail nap.

 

Deep Creek bridge

Hot, dry canyon hiking

When we got going again, we passed the 300 mile mark on the trail.  Well, there was no marker, but we have now walked 300 miles in the SoCal desert.  Yippee.

Originally I was going to shoot for a set of hot springs that is up the trail a mile or so.  But there is no camping permitted there and I did not want to hike into the dusk trying to find an empty spot.  So when I came to a pretty little flat spot beside a side stream, I called it for the night.

Home for the night