Day 112 : An atypical day

9th August 2013
Mile 1582 to mile 1606.5 : Scot Mountains campsite to Etna Summit
Mileage : 24.5
Average mileage since day 101 : 22.6

Today was atypical in all respects. Unusually I awoke to discover the sky was overcast, which I w thankful for as it meant that we would be spared the sun's rays for as long as the clouds were there making for easy hiking even during the middle of the day. As per usual I started behind the other two, but overtook Rocky almost immediately as he was having trouble with hIs feet that morning. An hour later I caught T-Rex standing in the middle of the trail stock still absorbed in the antics of a doe and her young fawn, who were on the trail just up ahead. I was determined to get a picture this time, and carefully and quietly got out my camera and crept up to where T-Rex was standing a few meters farther up the trail. As it turned out I needn't have been some cautious as this mother and child pair seemed totally unperturbed by our presence, and carried on doing their thing. After a few minutes however they made their way infront of us across the road that the trail was about to cross. Before starting the trail i would have assumed that deer move gracefully and noiselessly through the forest, but i have learnt that this is not so. The adults seem to make as much noise as we do when we clamber over fallen trees  and the like, but in contrast the fawn made almost no noise whatsover. The little guy bounded out of view so effortless and so silently it looked like he was controlled by a puppeteer who had just lifted up. I even got a picture of him mid jump that i will endeavour to put up when I can. I wish I were able to traverse obstacles like that, I seem to climb over fallen logs with all the grace of an arthritic elephant. The encounter over we continued up the tail joined by Rocky who had caught up while T-Rex and I watched the deer. A few miles later the heavens opened, and out poured not rain, but thunder, lightning and hail. We were just about to leave the treeline and climb up onto a ridge when a massive flash of lightning hit the forest nearby. An instant later there was acolossal clap of thunder, louder and closer than anything I have ever experienced before. We stood on the edge of the forest deliberating our available options when the weather decided for us. An even bigger bolt of lightning hit the forest only a couple hundred meters away judging by the near simultaneous thunder. We ditched our lightning rods, aka hiking poles and literally sprinted back down the trail into the cover of the tree at while now being pelted by hail as big as marbles. The three of us huddled under the a group of small trees not daring to seek protection under something larger thinking it would be more likely to be hit by lightning than a small tree. We could do nothing but wait out the storm and try and keep warm as the temperature plummeted. Probably half an hour later we felt it was safe enough to continue so we carried on up the trail keeping a weather eye firmly clamped on th sky above as we hopped up and over a multitude of little peaks and ridges. It was a tense afternoon. Just after lunch I had climbed another exposed cliffside and had thankfully just dropped into th trees again when I saw my first bear. I looked up to see a cinnamon colored black bear running like the clappers downhill away from me into the forest. I wondered if it was running away from me, or running, ie chasing, another small fawn and doe that I had seen only a few minutes before on the proceeding bit of trail. When in Yosemite i had been told by a ranger that in the early spring bears feed almost exclusively on small fawns which are too small to outrun bears that can run faster than most horses, a unfortunate fact of life in the natural world i suppose. I heard from Rocky later that the deer pair had hung around with him for a good 15 minutes finally passing him on the trail close enough for him to touch them, were he to have tried. The bear i saw was sprinting downhill at a speed i would have thought impossible i had not known the horse fact, and so it transpired was running  from me. I worried about his knees running downhill like that, an arthritic elephant could not have performed a similar feat of athleticism that's for sure. Pleased with seeing my first bear finally after so many miles passing through bear country, I carried on towards the day's objective at Etna summit feeling much better about the inclement weather and the lightning. Only about 10 minutes after my successful bear sighting my good spirits were taken from me by a swarm off hornets. They had unwisely decided to build their nest the trail and were upset when I accidentally stepped on it. The hornets made run for only 2nd time on the entire trail, and I was not happy about it either time. A hundred meters or so past the nest I stopped to catch my breath and inspect the back of my left knee, which had been stung several times. Thankfully I am not allergic to much in life so the stings resulted in not much more than a throbbing pain that persisted for a few hours as I made my way down to the pass that is Etna summit. Although we had only done about 26 miles, we all arrived there at almost the same time as we would have done after a normal day. The visibility at the summit pass was uncharacteristically poor, caused by the stormy weather, and the proximity of a major fire in the next valley, a subject about which more will be said in the next post. The fire meant the road was closed after the summit to traffic apart from service vehicles, which do not pick hikers up. We sat in the cold, windy, damp weather trying our best to like spritely in the hope of securing a ride, but over an hour later we were still there. In the end Rocky and I climbed a nearby hillock and managed to get enough bars worth of reception on his phone to call the owner of the local trail hostel in the town of Etna where we would be staying that night. 20 minutes later the 3 of us, along with another middle aged male hiker who had joined us by the road, we squeezed in his pick-up truck happy to be finally out of the weather. On the way down I was in the front seat and was making small talk explaining i am (sort of) from Manchester, well actually born in Stockport but i never get that specific as most Brits have a hard time with that let along Americans when i asked Dave, our ride and hostel owner, where he was from. He replied 'Sheffield'. Without hearing even a hint of the characteristic Sean Bean accent I politely asked where Sheffield was in the US guessing there was a namesake town somewhere, he looked at me quizzically and replied 'you're from Manchester but you don't know where Sheffield is?'. It turned out he was a Brit who had moved to the US in his late teens and had since become a naturalized citizen along with his Danish wife Vicky. It was weird talking about the Peak District, the Pennine Way, Snake Pass, Castleton, Glossop, Buxton and even Chinley where i lived for year many years ago as a child, and where I did a fair amount of hiking while a student in Manchester, with someone from a 200 person nondescript town halfway across the world. He even knew the Old Nags Head, a pub in Edale at the southern end of the Pennine Way frequented by hikers, including myself a few times, escaping the often horrible weather on Kinder Scout. The world is a small place. 15 minutes of nostalgia later Dave deposited us at the local food and watering hole where we had some celebratory drinks and a well earned meal before heading back to the hostel after a long, eventful and tiring day on the PCT