Two weekends ago Brittney and our new friend Kyle and I hiked the Highline trail, well most of it anyway. The highline is a 51 mile hike that runs from Pine/Strawberry to the 260 Trail head by Christopher Creek. Our intent was to hike the 51 miles in two days and we did great the first day as we hiked about 30 miles. It was beautiful and during the hottest part of the day we got a great rainstorm that cooled everything off and made it much more pleasant. About a mile from when we camped that first night we saw a bear as she ran into the trees and then we heard her growling at us. I wonder if she had some cubs she was trying to protect. The next morning we got up at about 4:30 and packed up and headed out for another long day of hiking. It was so beautiful and we saw tons of Elk. About 4 hours into the trip we ran into a black timber rattler on the trail. After all this time of fearing such, I have finally run into a rattle snake. I was actually very calm and it did not unnerve me nearly as much as I thought it would. As you can see from the picture I was actually pretty close to it and I did not die of a heart attack.
A couple of hours after that experience, we started hiking in this really tall grass that was extremely annoying. Kyle started feeling really itchy and by the time we crossed the creek he started having some serious allergic reactions to the grass. He broke out in hives and his face swelled like a balloon and he was complaining of his throat closing and not being able to breathe well. We decided we had better get him out of there as fast as possible. We found a road off the trail and started walking down toward the highway. We came across a ranch and stopped to ask where we were in relation to town. They offered to give us a ride to our car (about 20 miles away) and we took them up on it. Kyle was especially thankful as he was not feeling well at all.
We decided we will have to go back and do the other side of the trail so we can complete the whole thing but it was still a really fun trip and we decided Kyle would be a great backpacking companion on the JMT in September.
3 comments:
P.s. Who is this Matt guy??
p.p.s. I kinda got a kick out of your hiking story. I would of probably been grateful too:)
I love reading about your adventures and seeing pics of all the pretty places you go. I am living an adventurous life through you.
Do not think for ONE SECOND that I believe you took that picture of a rattler..uh-uh, nope, not in a million years! Who are you and what have you done with Nedra???
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