Pictures -- Southern California
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The southern terminus of the Pacific Crest Trail is at the Mexican border just south of Campo, CA. It feels like a war zone down there, with the barren landscape and primitive border fence. Other hikers reported that Minutemen were present when they started north; it is not uncommon for hikers to see illegal immigrants pushing north on the trail.
You need to stick your foot under the fence in order to be technically accurate if you want to say, "I hiked from Mexico to Canada."
Trail angel Reinhold Metzger and his wife Karen dropped me off at the border around 6pm, which allowed me to put in some miles in the relatively comfortable evening temperatures.
There are wild differences in the amount of vegetation in southern California, depending primarily on elevation (which influences temperature) and rainfall (which is largely dependent on location, i.e. in a rainshadow or not). This photo was taken from the Laguna Mountains, where I was walking beneath shady pines and through knee-high green grass, looking east into Anza Borrego Desert State Park, where there is essentially no water or shade.
The trail drops down into Anza Borrego via Chariot Canyon. It was an intimidating descent because the conditions became significantly less tolerable as I went down: the temperature rose, the opportunities for shade disappeared, and the hope for finding natural-flowing water evaporated.
There is lots of life in the desert, and nearly all of it takes refuge underground, which is the only place where there is shade, cool temperatures, and moisture. Lizards like this one are constantly scurrying around the ground between your feet.
In several places trail angels maintain water caches for hikers because water is never in adequate supply. This is the Scissors Crossing Cache, which is fairly reliable; other caches are not as established, consisting of little more than a few gallons of water that are irregularly refilled. As a result, you can never rely on the caches -- you must carry all the water you need to reach the next completely reliable water source, using the caches just to top off.
Any food item with chocolate because a gooey mess.
But I love chocolate and was not about to give it up. So I learned to "eat" chocolate bars by letting them melt inside their wrappers and then squeeze them into my mouth.
The view south from the Desert Divide, up which I carried the heaviest pack of the entire trip: 5.5 lbs of gear, 12 lbs of food, and 16 lbs of water. The climb starts at the Pines-to-Palms highway and ascends 3,500 feet to the top of the San Jacinto Mountains.
It is a beautiful, but difficult, climb. Thankfully the temperature cools and the wind increases as you go up.