Predators in captivity...

June 2

The climb out of creek drainage continued the next morning with a few more creek crossings. Out of the desert and back into some more trees!! So nice. Switchbacked through slopes covered in beautiful purple flowers (lupine?). Those areas smelled amazing!

Met up with some hikers finishing up their day and one came up to ask about my hike and the section I'd just hiked that day. Turns out they were piecing the PCT together through day hikes and shorter backpacking trips. One of them ended up giving me some nice cold water and an apple :) They took off in there SUV for their hotel room but we said our see ya laters as it sounded like our hikes were going to overlap the next day.

Decided to finally try something I'd been meaning to do for a while, perhaps breaking the habit formed on the AT, make/eat dinner early and hike the last couple of hours before sundown. This leverages an early evening break to make and eat dinner before dark and the cold, possibly at a water source so water for cooking doesn't have to be carried, means that in bear country you're cooking away from your camp, a chance to squeeze out the last bit of daylight to make the most of the hiking day and I suppose to a small extent a chance to walk off the biggest meal of the day and not try to sleep on a full stomache. So near the top of a climb and inspired by a beautiful view of the mountains in the distance including a snow-capped range, I enjoyed a couple of packages of pork ramen :) Not the usual meal for me out here (maybe during late nights of programming at work maybe) but it was a rather enjoyable meal :)

I continued on after the great early evening meal and got in at least a few more hours of hiking, including perhaps an hour after dark. As the light was dying I came to a junction of dirt roads and the trail. Just past that point as I was hiking I came across a fenced-in property and when I looked up, in the fading light, on the other side of the fence... I see a grizzly bear! 8o ...Then I notice it's in a cage... looking rather complacent... and dejected... Then I see another cage a little bit away from the first with another griz.. Then my hair stands on end when I here a roar of a LION! It's unreal how cavernous and imposing the sound is in person... larger than life. I couldn't see it but I'm almost glad I couldn't... It was intimidating enough as it was standing in the dusk light in front of those grizzlies but also incredibly sad... and seeing those broken hearted bears.. nevermind possibly seeing 'king of beasts' like that.. so I slowly continued on to the sound of the lion letting out a long series of... barks? howls? grunts? Moans? I don't know what to call them but it got some other animals (other big cats?) riled up a little.. I swear I could hear that lion for at least a mile or two... It was a pretty sad experience and reminded me quite a bit of a similar experience on the AT as the trail leads you right through the middle of a small zoo which held all sorts of animals which you'd possibly see on the trail, including a few black bears. Seeing them in captivity after walking around in the woods for so long was just depressing.. never heard a hiker feel differently. Not sure what the enclosure here on this trail was for but I'm guessing some kind of performance, circus maybe? I think the website given in one of the guidebooks was predatorsinaction.com but I haven't taken the chance to check it out...

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Location:Onyx summit