PCT Day 3
5.17.22 || Day 3: 41.5- 61.5 miles
tldr; turned 26, mini resupply at Mount Laguna general store, saw a rattlesnake 🐍
Woke up around 6:45 and my face was so puffy it looked like I’d aged a decade overnight. Thankfully, I was only a year older sleeping on the ground in a tent having eaten what was probably way too much sodium the night before.
We stopped into the general store on the way out of Mount Laguna to resupply for the next few days before Warner Springs. Kind pricey but lots of tuna packets. The morning hiking was so nice, still up in the mountains looking down on the desert floor. We went about 8 miles to the first water source, ate what honestly were transcendent tuna wraps, filtered, kept on.
Things were going super well, we passed 50 miles(!!) and it was mostly downhill. Then, we rounded a corner in a section of the trail where we were walled in by manzanitas and other scrubby sharp bushes and heard it. A soft rattle coming from the bush just ahead and on the right. Rattlesnake. And normally it wouldn’t be a big deal, I’d already sprinted around a section where I’m 90% positive I heard one the day before, but there was no going around this time. We tried — but scrubby/sharp bushes are potentially more lethal than rattlesnakes.
So we tossed some rocks up on the trail to try to shoo it away, contemplated waiting until it moved. And ultimately decided we had to go ahead. So even though I offered :) Ty went first and I was close behind. We sprinted past the section and as I passed I felt something on my shin. And I yelped? Or at least made a sound that was just not ordinary. Turned out I tapped myself with my hiking poles so.. we kept on.
The miles after that were really difficult, I was so spent from all the adrenaline of the rattlesnake. Super windy ridges, lots of up and down, then finally got water .5 off the trail at a tank where we met another hiking couple from Columbus, OH. Pretty sure around mile 19 I tried to cry but there were just no tears, not hydrated enough for that. Feet were SO sore I felt every pebble.
Finally made it to camp, stretched, ate, barely wrote, then to bed so we can do it again. Certainly not the best or worst birthday I’ve had, but hoping to celebrate in town when we get to Idyllwild!