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

[Tom Hudson]

I went on one of those SBCC geology field trips, back in 1999.  Had a GREAT
time.  We didn't have a "There's a snake n my boots!" moment, though...

/Tom

On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 8:46 AM, 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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