Memorial Day Backpacking Trip - Part 1

Steven and I didn't have any plans for Memorial Day weekend. That was until we called up my sister around 7pm on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend to ask her and her boyfriend Matt for a favor. They told us that they were going on a backpacking trip to Willett Hot Springs up in Ojai and were leaving at 5am the following morning. They invited us and we agreed to go at around 8pm. So we had 9 hours minus sleep time to prepare for a 3 day and 20 mile round trip hike.

Using GPS we discovered that from the parking lot to the camp site is actually almost 11 miles each way. The way out was fun but difficult. It was hot and there were many river crossings.

The red line follows our GPS path so basically everywhere Steven and his Droid 2 went was recorded. If you want to view the path in Google Earth download this: HikingIntoWillett

This is one of the many crossings and a foreground photobomb!

Am I really this short? This must be how Steven sees me (or doesn't).

One fellow camper brought a guitar so we had some music going on during the hike. In this pic he's harmonicizing as well which was particularly impressive.

About 3 miles into the hike is a beautiful watering hole. It was a nice place to take a break and go swimming.

Here are a couple of shots of the beautiful scenery.

Because of all the river crossings we had to take our shoes off and on a half a dozen times. After each our blisters got worse and worse. Some feet are being duct taped here to avoid further damage.

There were a bunch of these crazy torch looking plants along the way.

After a while Steven and I pulled ahead of the group but we still took pictures of the rest of our group taking a break some ways away.

There is an option to ride a horse in and have the horses carry in all you stuff but it's like $400 and that may be per horse. Plus horses try and scrape Steven off on branches.

Now here's the best part! After Steven and I separated from the group we were plowing ahead. I was following closely behind Steven until he yelled and turned with a horrified look on his face. He was passing a bush just to the left of the trail and all of a sudden there was a very loud rattling noise. SNAKE!

Every time we tried to continue on the path the snake would rattle and warn us away. Now it's hard to encapsulate the noise by a single word like "rattle". It was this primal noise, wholly animal yet also somehow mechanical, that spoke directly to your amygdala and what it said was, "You're gonna die."

So we hung out for a bit trying to figure out what to do until some more seasoned hikers approached us. One of the crazy dudes (in Birkenstocks, that's how you can tell) peeked into the brush and realized that the snake had already caught his dinner and so was relatively safe for us to peek at.

Steven and I were much too scared to get as close as the other dude who got less than 4 feet away so Steven used his awesome zoom to snap the following pictures. (10x, yo) We couldn't really see anything in the picture viewer on the camera since it was so bright out and the viewer is so small so we were surprised to see what we got when we saw it on the computer.

Yup! That's a rattlesnake eating a full grown squirrel!!! Check out how evil he looks!

That would be a close up of the murder in his eyes.

The picture below is a bit blurry but I like how you can see his massive scaly body in the foreground and his large head on the left eating the brown furry squirrel on the right. He was probably 4-5 inches in diameter.

And of course his tail.

I'm glad he warned us to stay away while he enjoyed his meal but I'm more glad we didn't cross before that poor squirrel. In the interest of not letting the next hiker be scared out of their wits and/or eaten we left a note on the trail and continued on.

So part 2 is soon to follow with pictures of the campsite and the hot springs!