Hot damn I thought, a good samaritan. I will do just that. So I take the trail and walk about two miles and then see a sign that says Mirror Lake 1.7 miles.
Oh well, maybe it was a practical joke, I didn't care. I can take a joke. A walk would do me good, sore ankle and all.
At some point I came across a logging crew in the forest. There were flagmen and I was waved through. A few minutes later I heard one of the loudest noises I have ever heard.
I have been on the other end of a Katyusha rocket fired from Lebanon and it was comparable if not louder.
As a sensory experience it rocked my world, definitely unbelievable. Not sure how much a two hundred foot redwood of this kind of massive girth weighs but it had to be hundreds of tons.
When I was a kid in Idyllwild I was once caught out in a storm and had a tree come down about a hundred yards from me but it was nowhere this big. Still very scary. A peak sensory experience.
I once saw the aftermath of a giant crane falling down off Friars Rd. in Mission Valley. It fell on the 163 Highway and fell on the back of a pickup truck like a cat catching a mouse's tail. Always wondered if the occupants survived?
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I had six thousand dollars worth of camera and lens around my neck with essentially no protection. Of course I had the perfect plastic camera wrap, back in the car.
I did a lot of hiking as a youth in Idyllwild, I should know better. Barely enough water, no windbreaker, no ankle brace.
The reality is that the weather can and does change dramatically in these high elevations. I was really dumb but I managed to get lucky and dodge my idiocy.
Mirror Lake was frozen and a bit underwhelming. Great walk nonetheless.
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