Date: May 31, 2017
Miles: 656.9 – 680.9
I woke up to a beautiful sunrise over Ridgecrest, which I enjoyed with my coffee before I started hiking at 6 am. The sky was overcast for most of the day, and it rained later in the afternoon, enough to soak me pretty thoroughly.
The clouds didn’t prevent the rattlesnakes from hanging out on the trail, however. Matthew took one on, first throwing rocks at it to try to get it to move, and then poking it with a hiking pole, which finally convinced it to retreat down into some rocks across the trail.
After about 20 more miles, my aching hips and screaming feet reached Cranebrake Road, where Tim and another gentleman named Jim were waiting with more food and beverages. A bit before I got there, some Forest Service employees had left a bunch of MRE’s with Jim, so we all tried one. Most of them had pasta, generic pop tarts, bread, and other things that added up to about 3000 calories per meal, which was awesome. It’s been difficult to keep weight on out here, even with the number of snickers that I eat.
