Beginnings, New People, Pushing Limitations

The Day’s Stats

Miles walked: 20.0

Cumulative Miles: 20.0

Gross Elevation Gained: 3,064 ft

Cumulative Gross Elevation: 3,064 ft

The official southern terminus of the PCT.

I got on my way around 6am on the big day, later than I had planned to. I blame my super comfy airbnb and the ever-changing Uber rates during rush hour. When I had checked the night before, a ride from San Diego to Campo was about 90 bucks and I’ve accumulated enough uber credits from drunken work parties to cover most of that. But when I checked uber at 5:30 am the rate had skyrocketed to almost $400! I panicked and kept rechecking to see if the price would go down but it just kept creeping upwards. Whatever algorithm Uber uses to approximate costsl was seriously not helping me out. As a last resort I downloaded Lyft, not really hopeful the prices there would be better. But alas! Lyft quoted me $90 and I was all over it. I strained to haul on my pack, full of food and 5 liters of water and I was off!

The wall at the Mexican border. Though it might be inappropes to push off from it like a sprinter on starting blocks, but I did want to cement the start of the journey with something physical.

As my Lyft vanished around a curve in the road, the weight of what I was about to embark on hit me hard. Could I really walk until I hit the Canadian border, 2,654 miles later? The sickening thought occurred to me that all the miles I’d driven in the past week only amounted to about 2,300 miles, and I’d found the trip long and tedious. “And now you’re going to attempt an even greater distance on foot?? Idiot idiot idiot”, I taunted myself. Pushing those thoughts aside as best I could, I tried to think only of my next stopping point, 20 miles down the trail at Lake Morena where I hoped to camp for the night(camping grounds next to a beautiful lake plus toilets and showers, yesss!). Certainly I could manage this first but, and then tomorrow I would just have to shift my mindset a bit to accommodate one more leg of the journey.

I took off down the 2 ft wide strip of land that would be my home for the next 4 months(being extremely optimistic, but hey, you gotta be doing something like this). I got really lucky on starting dates because the temperature outside was only about 55 degrees with total cloud cover, and would stay below the mid 60s all day. The trail was nice and cruisey for miles, and as I walked I started running into all the people who started that day. There were a lot of cursory introductions, nervous checks to see how much others’ packs weighed and how much water they were carrying, and failed attempts to find a private spot to pee. Even though I’m obsessed with my shewee I did have a few fails with it that day, resulting from being rushed and not willing to pull my pants down very far with all of us being bunched up at the beginning of the trail. Peeing on yourself isn’t good for morale, but I was feeling good and strong and felt sure i could hit 20 miles that day no problemo.

The trailhead.

Mile 1 completed! Just need to do that 2,654 more times! Nbd riiiight? I basically got this already. (This is the only mile that is officially marked like this that I’ve seen.)

Get ready folks, there are a hell of a lot more yucca photos where this came from. They’re just so beautiful I had to stop about 50 times the first couple of days to take pictures.

Woohoo so easy! 2.3 down.

Even with all my frenzied, manic photo-taking that first day(can’t miss ANYTHING eeeee!) I managed to hook up with a few people and we formed a nebulous, first-week freshman in college type group of friends. We were dubbed the Under-dawg Crew by some more experienced hikers since almost all 7 of us had almost no thru-hiking experience, yet were still shooting for that golden standard of seasoned PCT veterans: the 20 mile day. My confidence in myself started to wane as we started the 5 mile climb out of Hauser Creek canyon that would take us to Lake Morena campgrounds. My feet hurt like hell, blisters had sprouted on top of the calluses I have on my big toes (looked like a callus-blister wedding cake), and even though the day was cool the steady climb to end the day drenched all of us in sweat and a lot of breaks had to be taken. I let the rest of the Under-dawg crew pass me by since I knew I’d be hobbling to the finish line that day. But by god I made it! I had hiked from about 7am to 7pm, hobbling to the campground and realizing I didn’t quite know how to set up camp. It wasn’t a great pace, but i had stopped for a lot of food, feet, and foto breaks along the way and considering how beaten up I felt at the end, I had really given it everything I had. Foolishly, I planned in my head the water sources and timeframes needed to do 22 miles the next day into Mt. Laguna. Stay tuned for that ill-fated adventure!

Breaking with some of the other newbies.

Ahhh goal in sight! Lake Morena in the distance.

My first attempt at setting up camp. Rainfly was not nearly right enough for the high winds and cold rain that night.

Blisties and sunburn. First of many battle wounds.