Hitch One - Anza Borrego

On our first hitch, we were joined by the other PCT crew and two volunteers, Levi & Roger. Everyone was pumped up and ready to put the skills they had learned at work skills training to use. However, the weather had it out for us and our start date was pushed back two days however, due to snow.

Travel day came and we headed for Tule Spring. We soon found out, as we neared the work site, that the melting snow made the roads slick and near impossible to drive with our truck and trailer. The crews received instruction to move to Scissors Crossing, a site at a lower elevation so there would be no chance of snow. The next morning we met up with a few trail volunteers from a group called the Trail Gorillas. They taught us how to use a brush saw (imagine a weed whacker with a saw at the end of it) and then everyone got to practice with one. They are noisy little things but helpful when cutting thick brush.

Things were looking better the next day as we got the ok to move back to our original worksite. Before leaving though we took a side trip to the town of Julian, a place with some of the best pies you'll ever eat. We made it to Tule Spring on the dry roads, set up camp, and prepped for the next days of intense brushing. With only three days to use the brush hogs, we tried to clear as much trail as we possible. We widened the trail corridor and cleared over 8860 ft of the PCT. As the sun set on our final day on hitch, our spirits were as high as the crescent of the new moon, rising over the hills of Anza-Borrego.