Wednesday, May 10 — day 45

Pct mile 551.00 to 663.54

Medic and I slept in late then ate a huge breakfast and worked on our blogs.  At 10:30 Greg picked us up and took us to the supermarket for food resupply shopping.  Then it was lunch at a great Mexican restaurant in InyoKern before I was dropped off at Walker Pass.  Greg took Medic on to Onyx where he will take a Zero.

While I was chatting wit Hannah the trail Angel, Doc drove up ( he’s stopped hiking and is now shuttling PCTers).  Soon Candido, now CandyMan hiked down and Doc whisked Jim off to Onyx to get his resupply from the Post Office before it closed.

I decided to start hiking around 2 pm.  There were intermittent clouds and a nice breeze.  I’ve got 13+ miles to go, mostly up, with no water til the end.

The trail immediately started uphill as they are want to do from a pass.  I wound my way around this hill/mountain 

I captured this forward and backward looking panorama 

The flowers on this side of the path were also spectacular 

I came across a termite nest that was On the move!  The winged termites were pouring out of holes on the trail and taking flight

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The trail wound from the west sunny side of the ridge to the east, shady side making it that much cooler and nicer hiking.  I passed a local carrying his two dogs on the trail. I commented that he was taking his dogs for a walk but doing all the work: spoiled dogs!

I found another kind of yucca today

And soon after almost stepped on rattlesnake number 9

He/she was cold on the shady side of the mountain and needed a bit of coaxing with my hiking poles to move off the trail.

I also finally captured a photo of a jackrabbit, tiny but visible in the center of the photo.

It was getting dark when I finally found a decent campsite in a dry streambed.  I now can look forward to good water sources for the rest of the trip, but I’m thinking that will come with increased levels of mosquitoes.  I’ve only seen a few before today.  I hurriedly set up my tent, ate dinner and crawled into the tent and wrote my blogs – I am very surprised to have cell access way out here!

It is a silent and clear night!  The stars would be great if it weren’t for a full moon.

Thanks for reading!