DAY-1 REPORT: 5/6/12 Border To Hwy.94 (2.3 mi one-way, 4.6 mi OAB

75-78 Degrees with a pleasant, cooling westerly wind.  We started hiking at 10:45am and finished at 2:00pm.

After checking with a Border Patrol agent near Campo we decided that it would be fine to park the truck at the border for just a few hours and do an OAB (out-and-back) from that direction, rather than north-south-north from Hwy 94.   We had a lot of anxiety about this leg because of the proximity to the border, and we’ve never been to this area before.  It’s actually a very beautiful area to visit, and quite benign.  We felt extremely safe there.

All in all it was a much more fun and scenic hike than we had thought it was going to be. We met one through-hiker going north, “BD Brad”.  Nice guy who had just come back from trekking in New Zealand.  Other folks we talked to in the area were really friendly to us… I think that they had first thought we were through-hikers.  Yeah, like we were going to hike to the Canadian border with a 3.5 year old on our backs!

After hiking we spent a few hours doing recon for upcoming hikes, determining optimum meeting places for shuttling and determining where we would be leaving vehicles.  I highly recommend doing this, as for example it’s tough to find out where the PCT actually is near Boulder Oaks Campground.  We did recon all the way up to Cibbets Flat Campground.  Part of the recon was making determinations as to whether bike shuttling would work out on upcoming legs or whether it would be best to car shuttle some legs instead.

Since we had such a short hike earlier in the day we also did a 3.2 OAB down Horsethief Canyon to Pine Creek and took a refreshing dip in a large pool there.  Nice way to finish a great day!