Wherein I Almost Die

On one particular stream crossing, Ramsey's Draft is split for about a quarter of a mile and you're actually crossing two halves of it with a wide pile of rocks, fallen trees and a few road drainage parts (cement blocks and pipes). After crossing the first half, you're in the middle and unable to figure out where to cross the *other* half to find the trail. We continued down the median (perhaps this is what we were supposed to do, I don't know) rock hopping and climing over big, splintery tree parts. At one point, Paul stepped on and over a big rock. Apparently, he "woke" up the Timber Rattler that was partially under this rock. It started rattling, but by the time I was cognizant of what I was hearing and realized that it was parallel to me and coming from the right, it was too late. I looked down and six inches from my ankle is the now riled Timber Rattler. I hopped as far as a could away. Thank &diety I landed on good footing. Thank &diety that it didn't really *want* to bite me (it was sunning itself, not hunting) and Thank &diety I didn't actually see it's head and fangs (just it's body and tail). I was so terrified that I glanced down to confirm what I was hearing, and as soon as I realized it, I looked ahead for footing to jump the fuck away. I saw the rattling tail and it was coiled up, so I saw the midsection too. Based on the size of that and that of the other snakes I've seen, I'd say it was 3-4 feet long. Big, but not exceptionally so, it was very grey and very well matched to the rocks. The black bands were very small, visually. I experienced a serious adrenaline rush and I admit to being terrified. We then had *more* hot rocks to clamber over, and that was very hard to get myself to do, thinking that there were *gasp* more of them there and that we were actually crossing a snake den. To add to the stress, we really couldn't figure out where to cross the second half of the stream to find the damn trail again, and we didn't dare go back and see if we'd miss the official spot.

The rest of the jaunt down to Jerry's Run Trail was pretty uneventful. Oh, wait, we saw some baby grouse in the weeds at our feet at one point. They were yelling their heads off for their mom or we might have stepped on them, they were camouflaged so well. They were darn cute.

At this point, we figured we'd head back to the basecamp, relax and cook dinner and then decide whether to hike out that night or not.

Jerry's Run Trail itself was characteristc of the area, and we didn't see much of interest except more beautiful mountain stream scenery. We arrived back at basecamp at 17:00 and I made some backpacker spaghetti (this is like regular spaghetti only the sauce is from dry ingredients and the noodles get cooked in a pot that's too small). It was quite passable, though I thought the potato soup of the previous night was superior. If I can ever get Tino to camp again, I'll definitely make up a batch of the dry ingredients for the soup.

After resting for about an hour and a half, we both felt rejuvenated enough to do the 3.5 miles out, so we packed. We departed the area (the site of the former Sexton Cabin) about 19:00, and I was shocked (shocked) that two hours had gone by in a flash.

No wildlife of any kind was seen on the way out, and we arrived at the car at 20:30, which is excellent time for hiking with packs.