Day 1











 A great first day on trail! Thursday night I stayed at camp lockett, a place created for pct hikers that are starting the next day. There were about 25 hikers there, and it was a great time. Several pct hikers from years past run the place, and they offer some good advice about many aspects of hiking the trail.


Some people were curious about pack weight, and my baseweight (without food and water) is 16.3 pounds and my starting weight is 26.25 pounds. 


I headed out from the starting monument at about 9:30, starting with 1 liter of water. This seems to be an amazing time to start the trail, because the poor weather seems to have stopped for now, and the water sources are plentiful. On average there has been about one water source a mile, which is unheard of for this time of year. The desert this year is very green with many wildflowers. 


I’ve come across many hikers so far from all over the world. I was hiking with a man from France named Nicola for several miles, and I leapfrogged several other hikers for quite a while. I set up camp at mile 11.4, where i am joined with 5 other hikers: Elizabeth from Indiana,  Alashua from a town in far north Canada, Chris from Canada, Lisa from Oregon, and Auke from the Netherlands.


Today I plan on hiking 8.6 miles into Lake Morena, then probably hiking several more miles past it. 

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