- Total Miles: 9 (0 to 9)
- Days since last shower: 1
- Morale: optimistic
- Climate: High Desert
- Temps: 83/49
“This trail mix has peanuts, raisins and sunflower seeds. I don’t really like raisins or sunflower seeds.” -Jake (Nature Valley)
Day 1!! Look at us go! First things first: Liz didn’t fall in a hole. Despite popular opinion, she managed to avoid all large craters in the earth and glided right along the trail on her first day.
We spent last night at the house of some well-known PCT volunteers, Frodo and Scout. They are a couple in their early sixties that have hiked the trail and truly enjoy helping out others who are looking to do the same. After a great dinner and short night's sleep, we woke up well before the sun came up, packed up our bag, scarfed down some french toast, and piled into a van with some other hikers to drive to the start of the trail.
The drive was uneventful aside from some frantic last-minute emailing. We made it to the trail around 7 and took the obligatory starting photos:
A group photo at the southern terminus of all the great folks that stayed at Scout and Frodo's house the night before.
The southern terminus sits right along the Mexico border outside of a small town called Campo. There were about 15 other hikers setting off from the start with us, and we were of course the last ones to make our final adjustments and actually hit the trail. We made it about 200 yards before Liz exclaimed that her foot hurt. After another 200 yards I found out that not only her right foot was bothering her, but also her ankle and knee! Oh, did I mention that Liz had to get brand new shoes two days before the hike because the pair she wanted to wear (and has been wearing for the past half of a year) turned her toenails black on our final tune-up hike in Albuquerque? Oye.
Back to the story at hand, we made it about half a mile before she took off her shoes, and we readjusted the laces and tongue to provide a little more room. Voila! Surprisingly, this seemed to do the trick.
The morning went relatively smoothly while we got adjusted to all of our gear in this unfamiliar land. The terrain is dry and mountainous (think foothills, not big guys). To our surprise and delight, there is a decent amount of vegetation on the trail which provides shade from time to time. While stopped a few miles in we met Trace, a guy around our age with an epic beard who also owns his own company and is working from the trail (cue Liz's happy face!). After a few well deserved compliments on his facial hair he hooked us up with some sweet PCT stickers that he designed.
Around midday Liz’s head started to give her fits (Liz’s headaches are our Achilles heel...we are doing everything we can to keep her cool and out of direct contact with the sun. Included in our arsenal to fend off this pesky sun, we have an umbrella (I prefer sunbrella), sun gloves, sunglasses, long sleeve UV resistant shirt, and my personal favorite, a completely ridiculous sun hat (hands down Liz’s favorite piece of gear).
In any case, midday came, and it brought bright sun and warm temperatures. With Liz’s head starting to bang around we found a shady area on the trail and took a little siesta, prepared our dehydrated lentil lunch, and listened to a podcast (episode 8 of serial, season 2. WHY BO, WHY!?). Feeling a little better and starting to get antsy, we started out again around 4. We thought this would have given the sun enough time to sink in the sky so that hiking was a little more pleasant; however, we were wrong. The day was still hot and we pushed through the last couple of miles to find a pleasant camping area off of a 4x4 road. Some folks we met along the trail strolled in about a half hour later and joined us in setting up our tents.
We’re writing to you now from our tent where we can see the stars and the lights from a larger city in Mexico, perhaps Tecate?
While the day was tough, we recharged a bit with this great campsite and are excited to wake up before sunrise tomorrow to try and get some miles in before things get too hot. We need to make it to mile 20 for more water at Lake Morena. This is one of the longer dry stretches on the trail (great way to start!) and began the day with about 2 gallons each (16 lbs).
Goodnight from the first day of the trail! Can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings!
Adam
