I woke up this morning to Noah reading aloud from a PCT listserv message that a woman thru hiker had slipped on snow and plunged off a cliff on Mount Baden-Powell, and was still missing. This, fortunately, turned out not to be true.

What is true, though, is rain — and lots of it. Interstate 5 was almost undriveable in places as we headed into San Diego this morning. When we got to Campo, and found our way out to the monument that marks the start of the trail, next to the steel Berlin-Wall-type border fence, it was steadily drizzling but not quite pouring. We sat in the car and read the trailhead register, which contained names of dozens of people who say they’ve started hiking the trail this spring and intend to walk to Canada. A few had web addresses. As Noah found the names, I looked them up on my phone: The first four we checked have already bailed out, apparently finding themselves in over their heads within a week or two of starting the walk.

The listserv also says about 30 hikers are holed up in Idyllwild, waiting for the snow to clear on Mount San Jacinto. That one I believe.

We drove back through incredibly beautiful country — rolling brushy terrain marked by stands of oak and cottonwood — past dozens of Border Patrol agents in their SUVs. At the end of a bucolic two-lane highway we found the port of entry at Tecate, where we parked at a nearby garage and walked across the border for lunch. Tecate is a good-sized commercial town, modern by Mexican standards, and has one of the friendliest border crossings I’ve ever seen, in either direction. Lunch was tacos, pork ribs, beans and rice, horchata and, yes, a Tecate, in a mom-and-pop place called La Placita right on the zocalo. While the parents cooked, the little boy fed stale bread to a flock of pigeons in the street outside.

Now we’re in a motel room half way back to San Diego — not a lot of amenities near Campo — and doing a last-minute gear sort on the floor.

Tomorrow: Noah takes off from Campo, and I meet him at Lake Morena, 20 trail miles north of the border.