Mile 118: Erin sees her first tarantula hawk. 'Was that a small hummingbird?"
We had been hiking since dawn, making reasonable time breaking camp without having to address blisters for 30-45 minutes each morning, and were about 3 miles away from camp when Erin saw the iridescent, violet black body and unmistakable red wings of the tarantula hawk. Impressively large, it is quite reasonable to think them a bird than the parasitoid wasps that they are. I explained the awesome life history strategy of this group of wasps:
1.) female wasp digs a hole.
2.) female wasp flies around until a suitable larval host (=tarantula ) is spotted.
3.) female wasp paralyzes tarantula with a high-precision stab of the ovipositor at the end of its abdomen, rendering the locomotive actions of the spider useless, but otherwise fully alive.
4.) wasp grasps tarantula and flies it back to the hole (hence large size of wasp). Wasp lays eggs on spider, backfills entrance tunnel, departs.
5.) spider sits around, buried alive, with eggs on its back.
6.) eggs hatch, larvae proceed to eat spider alive.
7.) larvae pupate underground and emerge as adult-form wasps.
By this point, we hiked about half a mile with a middle-aged Asian gentleman who went by the name half-slow. He was attempting the trail for the 4th time since 2007, and had devised a different strategy to help him complete the journey: he found a trail angel to parallel the trail so that he might meet up for proper civilized arrangements and resupply every couple of days, as he wasn't "young like [us] anymore " (sic). He seemed impressed that we had hiked more than 10 miles in a day at this point in the journey, stating that he kept it to 10 or less for the first 3 weeks. His main piece of advice for desert travel was to get a solar umbrella. We tried to find them at kickoff but alas, it was not to be. It was only after he departed that Erin and I began to question the circumstances of this truly remarkable trail angel. We vowed to ask him about the details next time we met.
Erin and I ascending the western flank of Agua Caliente Canyon as the sun climbs over the hills.
A water break at Lost Canyon spring was less fruitful than initially hoped: the spring was not flowing, and the water from the trough tasted strongly of sulphur. On the bright side, it was cold and wet, and I devised a new technique of scooping water that avoided collection of floaters on the top of the water, in which an inverted scoop is placed in the water column, then righted mid-column to suck all the clean water in.
The climbing continued - I think we did around 4,000 feet all told today - and the temperature increased.
Self shot near the top of the major climb, looking north towards Hemet.
Erin's feet began hurting around the 8-mile mark, and we began to look forward to lunch/midday break at a campsite at the 10 mile mark. Sadly, shade was at a minimum, so we made do in a half-comfortable fashion on the shady side of a 15-foot tall boulder. Cooling winds coaxed us out of our break around 3, and we continued on to Casa de Herrera, a local Angel's house with a well-stocked water tank.
We ran into several folks from the previous night (manchurian, wagon wheel, Chris, and shotput) and a new chap named acid glasses. We shot the breeze for a bit, and though all were enjoying beers provided by trail angel mike, Erin and I abstained in the interest of a timely departure and an oncoming hunger. We continued the last 2 miles to camp on the Combs Ridge, which overlooked a drop off into a valley, flanked by Santa Rosa Mtn to the northeast and Mt San Jacinto due north.
A dinner of red beans and rice - FAR, far superior to the cheddar-broccoli debacle the night before - rounded out the evening underneath a brilliant patchwork of stars.
Coolest critters of the day: today, the award goes to the tarantula hawk. I really, really love how precisely tuned these parasitoid wasps are, with no rational thought or real problem solving abilities. Everything they do is more or less hardwired in this respect.
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