April 8th, 2022 by Jon
Well, today we started the PCT! What a feeling to finally be standing at the Southern Terminus. The monument itself is about 20 feet from the fence on the US/Mexico border, and it was a special moment to sign the book that signals your visit and the start of our hike. Ajia’s brother, Austen, and his wife, Ruth, were extremely kind and drove us out to the monument on Friday afternoon. It was a spectacularly hot day (~95 degrees), and we weren’t in a rush to begin our first day of hiking in such heat.
We got to the monument itself around 6:45 pm or so and began our hike around 7:00. We saw one other couple at the monument who will begin their hike tomorrow morning and are staying at a small campground about a quarter mile away. Photos taken, book signed, and a deep breath later, we were off! We walked along the road for the first mile or so, then wandered off through some rolling hills filled with desert plants. It was definitely greener than we expected.
After an hour of walking through golden light, the sun began to fall behind the hills, and soft oranges and pinks flowed across the sky. We took bets on when we would see our first snake while we meandered our way around small valleys and dried creek beds. As the light began to fade an hour after we started, we had more and more difficulty seeing the trail. Thankfully, we had thought ahead and stashed our headlamps in our hip belts. It was easy to switch over to walking with them.
As twilight gave way to darkness, I’ll admit I felt a bit unsettled. But as we walked, we began to enjoy the quiet of the mountain breeze, and the noises of creatures in the distance didn’t seem to startle us as badly. We quickly fell into a rhythm and reached the first source of water after 4.4 miles. The babbling creek would be the only source of water until Lake Morena at mile 20. We had enough water with us, so after a quick pause, we continued.
We passed a few tents that were camped just up the hill from the creek, and we did our best to turn our headlamps away to keep our disturbance to a minimum. 8:00 pm feels like midnight when you’re hiking, and the people we passed were already in their tents resting.
A mile later, we reached a small crest, and after climbing over it, we found a perfect little camp spot protected from the wind by some bushes on one side and looking out over a small valley. We had hiked 5.1 miles, and we didn’t feel like disturbing more people, so we called it a day, albeit a short one. Setting up camp was easy, and we stayed up for a while, giddy that we made it to this point. We could see lots of stars and a quarter moon sat high above us, filling the night sky with light.
Tomorrow we hope to hike 15 miles to Lake Morena Campground. We’re setting our alarm pretty early because we want to hike as much as we can before it gets too hot. The high is supposed to be in the mid 80s.
