Day 45 - The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog

Miles 558.5 to 572.8

After a few days off in tehachapi to let my body totally adjust to new medicine and let my arm heal as best as it could... we were off on Monday morning. Ted, an amazing local trail angel, picked Rumrunner, Hound and I up around 10:00am and got us back to trail. It was a surprisingly cold, windy, drizzly day to start our section through the Mojave Desert (for my wild fan readers, this would be where Cheryl started her journey on the trail).

We were all bundled up... and my rain jacket was being used for the second time on trail... shortly into the climb out of town... HotRocks and Chuckwagon caught up to us... HotRocks quickly gained a lead on the rest of us with his determined motivation and RumRunner had fallen a little behind... at one point I reached the top of a switchback stopped to catch my breath... Hound came up behind me stopping about 5 feet below me to catch his... and Chuckwagon stopping about 5 feet behind him.... standing there for a second... a giant creature jumped from the scrub bush next to Hound.... startling us all...at first I thought it was a chicken... but quickly realized it was a rabbit- now Hound is about 6’2 and this rabbit was about even with his face... when an 80-85 mph gust blew and contorted it all matrix style... from my angle it looked like it was about to ninja kick Hound in the face.... but the wind propelled it over his shoulder just in time... the rabbit landed on the ground and hopped away like nothing happened... Chuckwagon and I were laughing and exclaiming awe... Hound was a little punch drunk from the fear and proximity... I wish I had gotten a video...

Continuing on... Hound and I found some sun breaking through the clouds on a ridge side sheltered a bit from the wind... and decided to stop and eat the pizza I had packed out for lunch ... Chuckwagon pushed on.... after lunch we felt the weather was improving... until 5 seconds later when we turned to the other side of the ridge we had eaten on... right into a stormcloud - we were literally walking through the storm cloud... the wind picked up to about 40-50 sustained with much larger gusts and the drizzle was pelting us... we were both being blown around this ridge line like feathers... and the temparature had dropped to below freezing... we were trying to push through to find some sort of shelter... but it was hard to move with any speed because of the wind...then shards of ice started blowing around us- I saw a handful of trees and made a beeline... in the grove of trees... sheltered a bit from the wind.. I turn and see Chuckwagon curled up and shivering ...”what was that” he said?? - I screamed to Hound, so he could find us - and he immediately set up his tent for us to shelter from the elements... we had planned to go much further for the day to be closer to water... but given the windstorm and chill and the fact that tents were set up... we wound up sheltering out for the afternoon and night in our little tree grove...