Day 2 PCT – Mile 0.5 to mile 20.0. 5/2/21.
Start: C.L.E.E.F. Equestrian camp
End: Lake Morena Campground.
Weather: cool, foggy, see and overcast a.k.a. the perfect hiking weather.
This morning all the PCT hikers at the equestrian camp were so excited to start the PCT that Shannon and I ended up being the last ones to leave camp and we left at 6:15 AM! We hiked along the road and got stared down by the Border Patrol who slowed down, profiling us with our backpacks walking away from the US-Mexican border, tailing us and taking a lot longer than was comfortable to drive past us.
We headed up into the mountains directly across from the Border Patrol outpost and back into the desert. The trail took us through some nice rolling hills and fast flat pathways which was so surprising at how well maintained and almost manicured this first section of PCT was. I guess the PCTA is really trying to ease hikers into the journey which is definitely not the case for the Appalachian Trail. The weather was absolutely perfect for hiking – cool and in the 60s with a nice overcast fog from the ocean and lots of breezes. The trail was pretty easy, clear and before 10 AM we had already hiked 10 miles!
Legend had told us that a few days before it had rained so the desert was in full bloom as we hiked. We saw a funky vined plant with a spiky ball the size of a small melon that looked like a cucumber, lots of buzzards, a horned lizard, fat tailed ground squirrel and lots of flowers. We didn’t see many people till about 11 AM when we ran into a hiker from Alaska named Street kale who is super strong, super tall and really cool. She told me about living in the wild and remote town of Haynes, Alaska where the closest town is a 360 mile drive through Canada in the Yukon or a 12 mile boat ride. She said this March and April she saw the aurora with all sorts of colors which was really cool. We also hiked with a hyper guy named Keith who is out here for a month and Ryan who passed us at the Hauser creek campsite where Shannon and I stopped to make lunch, nap during the hottest part of the day in the shade and drink nasty water out of a sad puddle filled with chunks (a.k.a. dead bugs and algae) where the creek had once flowed.
There were signs all along the trail in Spanish saying that if you need help to press an emergency services beacon that was charged by a solar panel and someone would come rescue you. I guess a lot of people coming across the border illegally or hikers on the PCT have to bail out when the desert gets too intense. We later found out the drug smugglers like to use Hauser Creek for its remoteness and the ATV access road so it was good that we just rested there during the day and didn’t stay there for the night. Crazy! Thank you Park Rangers who shared that info with the PCT hikers.
We spent some time at lunch teaching fellow hikers Jordan and Mike about what poison ivy looks like since there was a ton of it. Around 2:30 we hiked up a steep climb out of Hauser Canyon and back into the mountains. Lake Morena was our end goal for today and with our feet feeling good and our spirits high, we chewed up the 20 miles of trail to arrive at the campground. The Lake Morena campground had a cheap PCT thru-hiker camp where a bunch of thru-hikers had already set up tents and had a fire going. For five dollars each, PCT hikers could take advantage of the showers, the bathrooms and the campground amenities which was really nice.
Up on the mountains we could see the lake which looked beautiful from afar but down on the shore, the lake seemed to have dried up and the shore was a looong ways off. A lady in the campground who had been hiking said she could see me all the way across Hauser Canyon earlier today with my bright shirt on. Shannon told her it was so he didn’t lose me and that’s why he made me wear the bright shirt. Haha. The rangers had strategically placed the PCT hiker campsite faaaar away from the normal people’s campsites probably because us hiker trash are too smelly, hairy and weird to be hanging around the paying customers.
At the bottom of Hauser Canyon earlier in the afternoon the PCTA people were collecting data and asking hikers about permits and stuff like that. They asked a lot of questions, especially if we started on our permit start date which we had not because we got our Covid vaccines and had to wait a little bit longer. We were hesitant to tell them this but they said we wouldn’t get in trouble if we didn’t start on our start date so we just confessed. One of the issues we were having was that even though we started late, when we tried to print off our permits after our start date the entire PCTA office was out on vacation with no phones or emails during the peak of thru-hiking season and the website would not allow us to print out our permits. This might be a bad thing because we’re supposed to have our permits with us the whole trail but we have been just using our confirmation email and people seem to be OK with that. I guess you can’t print out a duplicate permit after your start date so we’re a little bit SOL but oh well.
The descent out of the mountains into Lake Morena had lots of colorful posters with poems in English and Spanish for hikers of all ages coming down the mountain to read and enjoy. We also read a sign about the history of the area and a guy who had been hired by the Lake Morena public works or something in 1916 to bring rain to the valley because the water levels were so low. Well, the rainmaker went to work and soon enough it rained so much that the dam overflowed, wiping out entire towns and killed a few people. He was never paid the $10,000 that was owed way back in the early 1910s which seems like it would be a lot of money. Poor guy! I guess the moral of the story is that you get what you ask for?
As the afternoon shadows were lengthening, we set up camp and then went stomping down to the malt shop store which is a hiker friendly convenience store serving sandwiches. Shannon and I ordered burgers, fries and a cherry ice cream shake. We hung out with Mike and Jordan who had come right off the trail to “chase cheeseburgers” at the malt shop and we had a lot of fun talking to them. Earlier in Hauser Canyon, Mike had played his guitar during lunch which must’ve been the one of the smallest guitars I’ve ever seen. It was very quiet but it was really nice to have as background music. Later on after Mike and Jordan left to go set up tent and camp, we talked to “not Princess John” from San Jose, CA who is really nice and had a fumanchu mustache. We joked that he was “not Princess John” after introducing him to Shannon whose trail name is Princess North Star. He had a good sense of humor and I hope we get to hike with him a bit more in the future.
After “Not Princess John” left, these super annoying 20-something-year-old girls with two guys in tow showed up yelling about following them on Strava (“Strava or it didn’t happen”). They started spitting out the exact elevation and mileage they did and all these stupid apps that they were using and how everyone had to use them and follow them on social media and how well connected and well off they were. For some reason I was exhausted and just super irritated by them so we left, heading back to the campground where we washed up and then passed out.