Mile 0.0 – 2.7
I’m baaaack! After a long rehab, my feet have pretty much recovered from my first thru-hike attempt. I’m ready to walk from Mexico to Canada!
Imagine, you’ve been anticipating the start of your thru-hike for months, years, or at least hopefully weeks. You’re looking at your GPS while in a vehicle, slowly approaching the terminus.
You look around and see low-laying shrubbery, dirt roads, and a construction site you probably shouldn’t enter. Then, in the middle of the dust and dirt, you get your first sideways view of the terminus and it’s “rustic” 30 foot tall backdrop. After you’ve posed for a dozen photos on the terminus (hopefully you didn’t climb on and fall off), and “tagged Mexico” you can finally begin your hike! Right?
Errr, maybe just open the FarOut app and look at the map, because you likely feel pretty lost already, since there’s no discernible trail leading away from the Southern Terminus. If you’re lost already, how can you make it through the rest of the trail? Should you really be doing this right now? Would anyone really judge you if you didn’t? Is it too late to recall the Uber? No, no, you can do this…ish.
Hopefully…
I arrived at the southern terminus around 4 PM with two other hikers. We had contacted each other online in order to split transportation costs. We took turns posing in front of the terminus before hiking out. I’ve now tagged both the northern and southern terminus of the Pacific Crest Trail!
I left the southern terminus a little before 5 PM, and almost immediately it started pouring rain. The kind that blows in your eyes, maybe making you cry but you can’t really tell because it’s raining so hard.
I promise to not try and entertain anyone by giving a mile-by-mile play-by-play of the entire thru-hike, but the first mile may be the most invigorating, exhausting, exciting and disappointing mile of the whole trail.
Even though I’d only hiked a few miles, and was only 1.3 miles from my pre-determined destination, I stopped and pitched my tent at the first flat-ish spot I found.
But my tent still got wet, as did I when taking off my rain gear.
Ronni, one of the hikers with whom I had coordinated a rideshare from the airport, arrived not too long later in much the same condition and decided to share my “site.”
Just the trail’s little way of welcoming me back, and reminding me that I can plan all I want!
