BORDER: A Few First Steps

In late April every year, about 300 hikers gather at the U.S.-Mexican border for the Annual Day Zero Pacific Crest Trail Kick-Off, otherwise known as ADZPCTKO. Basically, the kick-off is a giant pep rally for past hikers, future hikers, trail angels and other interested onlookers to chat about pack weight, miscellaneous gear, water sources and snow pack. These are the hikers whose intent it is to make it all the way to Canada on foot in a single season. In fact, perhaps only a handful of them will persevere (average drop-out rate along the trail is about 35%). This is our chance to meet them when they’re fresh and still have that twinkle in their eye.

Getting here has taken a lot more effort and planning than you realize. Interspersed with the heady enthusiasm of the kick off party, we’ll get a bit of the behind the scenes that goes into pulling off a feat of this magnitude. Past "celebrity" thru-hikers Ray Jardine and "Yogi," who have each contributed their own version of trail manifesto for the hikers’ edification, will offer their insights as we witness prospective hikers parcel out the non-perishable food that will nourish them on the trail and send it ahead in boxes to various mail-drops along the way.

Ray and Yogi certainly know a thing or two about gear, but they also know the terrain intimately. If we’re lucky, they might let us view one of their favorite spots through their eyes. But the so-called Pacific Crest Trail was not always one cohesive unit. It took years of exploring, trail-blazing and negotiations with private landowners as well as the government to connect the dots. Along with the personal stories of the trail, we’ll take a bit of time to hear and see this history and learn about the evolution of the "thru-hike," a relatively young concept.

But in the end it comes down to the individual hiker, his or her solitary experience and the open-ended question of what it takes to see it through. This is the section that very often breaks people, early on. No one expects it to be the flat open space that does them in. But between the heat, the rattlesnakes and the unfathomable quantities of water that they need to carry on their backs between watering holes, it really is the terrain that separates the wheat from the chaff.

As they take those first steps into the literally blistering desert of southern California, gathering some hellacious blisters of their own, we’ll find out just what put this crazy thought into these hikers’ heads.