Hike for a Hospital

I woke up feeling a little worse for wear after a long first day and hobbled out of camp, feet blistered and swollen at ~9am, the last one to leave. It was a lovely sunny desert day akin to the kalgoorle weather I have now become accustomed to. It took me a couple of miles to get into my stride and peter and Hamish surprisingly came up behind me, as they had left an hour or so before me in the morning. Turns out they had got some funky directions out of lake morena and had started to walk back up the hill towards the border. They only realized they were going the wrong way when they saw a conspicuous looking trail of mini marshmallows that Peter had been snacking on yesterday. This reminded me of hansel and grettel and i had a good laugh at their expense, and we continued to walk on.

We stopped when an American couple called us back to show us the large rattle snake that we had walked within a couple of feet of. We were told our meaty kiwi legs were safe as it was not coiled to strike, nor rattling, and was just waking up. A mile or so I stopped to take a photo on a small granite out crop when Hamish pointed to my feet and said something along the lines of what I imagined as "look at that large snake at your feet". I jumped a meter into the air and did a sort of dance sprint down the rock to put them between me and the snake. Turns out he said nothing of the sort, at all, and my acrobatics were for no reason but to entertain two kiwis hysterical in laughter. It was as bear grylls would say "a good morale boost".

I walked the rest of the day mostly by myself only to stop and soak my feet in each stream, and to annoy every southbound hiker by chatting to them about different topics, but mostlytab out how I am from new Zealand and not Australia. I had a well deserved desert siesta under a tree on a slope at mile 28 where I did not move from an exhausted starfish position with my pack still on, for about an hour or so.

I got to Fred canyon about 5pm, set up camp and talked to two Canadians Ian and Steve about bear tactics in northern california. The consensus is to play dead until they start chewing on you, in which case it would be a good idea to fight back before becoming bear poo. Never look a bear in the eye and never run from a bear - but apparently some people like to run and yell at a charging bear, like a scene in Braveheart, to confuse it into thinking you are the predator. I am leaning towards the first tactic.