[pct-l] Was UL Tents, now Cowboy Camping

[AsABat]

Wow. Cowboy camping, I had a friend wake up in the middle of the night to a fox starting at him nose to nose. I once woke in the morning to find mountain lion tracks all around my sleeping bag, I guess he was too interested in the horses nearby to eat me. But a rattlesnake at my head would really freak me out.


AsABat
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"Palomino" <palomino.pct at gmail.com> wrote:

>I'll share a cowboy camping story...not from the PCT, but from the So
>Cal
>desert...
>
>Twenty-some years ago, I accompanied the geology crew from Santa
>Barbara
>City College on one of their notoriously fun summertime field  trips to
>the
>Four Corners region of the desert southwest. There were about 25 of us,
>riding in vans. No one brought tents...cowboy camping was the norm,
>sort of
>a geologists' rite of passage.
>
>As I remember it, our first camp was on some BLM land near Mitchell
>Caverns
>in the high desert of southeastern California. After dinner and a
>review of
>the day, we spread out and settled in for the night. One of the
>students, a
>bright 19-year old named Gordon, had a pretty interesting experience. A
>mouse visited his camp a few times before midnight, running across his
>sleeping bag just enough to wake Gordon up. Finally, when the commotion
>happened behind him, right above his head, Gordon had enough. He
>reached
>outside his bag, grabbed his trusty rock pick, and in one motion,
>turned to
>swing the business end of the pick at the mouse.
>
>What he saw when he was about to swing was a big fat rattlesnake with a
>tiny, frightened mouse in his mouth. From his prone position, Gordon
>swung
>hard and drove the pick through the snake's head and pinned him to the
>ground, where he died a quick, but squirmy death. Then Gordon went back
>to
>sleep!
>
>I don't know what happened to the mouse.
>
>Gordon told everybody the story the next morning and showed us the
>evidence.
>Of course, he was henceforth known as "Gordon the Impaler."
>
>Good luck with that whole tent research thing!
>
>Jim Ostdick
>Palomino
>San Juan Bautista, CA
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