I spent most of the last two days contouring through the San Felipe Hills, a 24-mile section of windy, steep, and rocky desert with no water. The wind was strong enough to blow another hiker’s sun visor off his head and over a cliff (never to be seen again), my snot kept whipping up on my sunglasses, and I spent an interesting night holed up at the entrance of an old mine shaft for shelter. But the trail was relatively straightforward, and I hiked for a while in the company of three Canadian guys before sprinting (stopping briefly to admire the aptly-named Eagle Rock) toward Warner Springs Ranch, where I’ll lounge the rest of this afternoon in an adobe cabin and hot springs. The luxury!

So, I’ve now hiked 109.6 miles in my first six days, and finished Section A of the trail, necessitating a new set of maps. Bring it on.

Thanks, by the way, to those who have been leaving comments – I read them all! It’s hard to reply from my iPhone, especially when I lose reception as I did most of yesterday. I will definitely keep the blog updated, though, whenever in range of a tower.

I eased off to a late start this morning after a stack of blueberry pancakes in Mount Laguna (per the waitress: “you want to lick the plate?”). I have one more rendezvous with my dad at Warner Springs, 68 miles farther on, in four days. That means the pressure’s off, so I can take the rest of this week a bit easier as I get used to the trail, and I spent this afternoon meandering 12.9 miles along a spectacular rim overlooking the Mojave desert.

Good thing, because my pack this morning weighed in at 35 pounds with four days of food and four liters of water. That’s probably about as heavy as it’s going to get this summer.

After chatting with a dirtbiker named Montana and a guy watering a tree planted on his best friend’s ashes, I set camp on a beautiful boulder field looking north across the mountains. Apparently some people believe the world will end today; maybe it’s an evening apocalypse? In that case, I’m going out with a sachet of reconstituted noodles and chicken. Yum.

At nine this morning my dad and I stood at the Pacific Crest Trail monument along the Mexican border, all alone except for two Border Patrol vehicles, a helicopter overhead, and a Sage Sparrow perched on the gigantic fence (head in one nation, tail in the other). After a couple photos and well-wishes, I hefted my pack and walked north, alone.

Alone, that is, except for a ton of birds, two snakes, and two girls I unexpectedly caught on a switchback who were beginning a three-month trek before resuming college in the fall (“Just as far as we can make it, like all of California would be cool”). The weather is beautiful, my legs are stretching out, and my dad was nice enough to meet me at a campground tonight 20.6 miles in; he’ll be sticking around for a few days to watch over me before heading home to Oregon. A poorwill is calling – it’s good to be on the trail.

I’m sitting in a San Diego Best Western hotel after driving more than a thousand miles with my dad, who is delivering me to the southern end of the Pacific Crest Trail first thing tomorrow morning. We toured L.A. yesterday on our way down from Oregon, and it was odd to spend the afternoon among mansions and Ferraris in Beverly Hills while anticipating four months alone in my tent. But I wouldn’t trade offices for anything!

So, tomorrow it begins: a 2,650-mile trail stretches north into the relative unknown. I hope it at least kicks off with nice weather; today was unseasonably rainy and cold for southern California, with snow in some areas I hope to traverse in about a week. But, for better or worse, I take the very first step in just a few hours, and, after almost a year of planning, I’m ready for it.

During a training hike this morning, I found a Turkey Vulture sitting on two eggs inside a cave on Spencer Butte. Vulture nests are actually quite hard to find; these birds are incredibly secretive for how common they are. Their main defense is to vomit on any intruder at the nest, so I didn’t get too close, but you can see the two speckled eggs if you look close enough at the photo.

I start hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in 22 days! Today I bought a complete set of maps designed by a man who calls himself Halfmile (seems like most long-distance hikers go by funny trail names), and a new tiny iPod. My stack of gear is growing. I’ll be hauling it all on my back soon enough…

It’s official: I’m going to hike the entire Pacific Crest Trail this summer. A new adventure is afoot!

The backcountry trail catapults north from Mexico through the deserts and mountains of California, Oregon, and Washington, ending at the Canadian border 2,665 miles later. To cover the distance in one season, I’ll have to do it in four months, averaging 22 miles per day without breaks. The logistics are intimidating: I bought four pairs of shoes, crampons, and an ice axe this week, and ordered a bear canister to protect my food, which will be mailed to post offices along the route. About 300 hikers attempt the whole trail each year, and about half of them make it; more people have summited Everest than finished the PCT. But I’m psyched for the challenge! It’s gonna be a great summer.

I’m home in one piece after spending the winter banding birds in Costa Rica. Apologies for the silence over the past month; I went on a whirlwind birding trip at the end of my three months in CR (and saw more than 450 species of birds!) and have been recovering in Oregon for the last couple weeks.

As things gear up for the summer, though, I’m ready to plunge into a new adventure, of a somewhat more physical type. I will begin hiking north from Mexico on about May 17, with regular updates here on progress. Stay tuned!

It’s been an awesome couple of days in northeast Costa Rica. The skies are clear, and Ed and I have been able to admire the Southern Cross as Ivan, our boatman, ferries us along the canal to our banding sites before sunrise each morning. Finally, we’re heading into the dry season.

Mid-morning today, we were just finishing a net run at Tortuga Lodge when we startled a Semiplumbeous Hawk from the ground next to one of our mist nets. Incredibly, the hawk swerved straight into the nylon mesh, and Ed and I simultaneously pounced before it could struggle free. What a catch! The hawk was too large for any of our leg bands (it takes a size 6, if you’re curious), and stood more than a foot tall. This was the first raptor we’ve caught in more than a month of banding here, and we were lucky enough to see it, much less catch one. Nice!

At 4:05 am this morning, while getting breakfast, I stepped barefoot and bleary-eyed on a Bullet Ant that had wandered into our kitchen. More than an inch long, this species is known for having the most painful sting of any ant or wasp in the world, akin to being shot (hence the name), which can last up to 24 hours.

Well, it got me. The thick skin on the bottom of my foot may have provided some protection – it felt more like stepping on a big nail than a bullet – but I staggered over to a chair, passed out, and then, apparently, keeled face first onto the floor with a loud thud. I woke up completely disoriented, with a throbbing foot, my nose smashed into the concrete, and with Ed shouting for our night watchman. Interesting. Luckily, the pain went away completely within a couple hours, and Ed and I set up our mist nets as usual. Unluckily, it rained (also as usual), and we got soaked, spent five hours sitting in a small shelter waiting for the rain to stop, then gave up, packed up our nets in a downpour, and went home to dry out.

After three weeks of full-on mud, rain, mosquitos, humidity, and everything else the lowland rainforest has to offer us in Tortuguero, Ed and I are packing to travel tomorrow to the highlands of Costa Rica. This week we’ll be banding birds at a place called Cerro de la Muerte, which, I’m told, is cold and dry, up in the mountains. And it has lots of quetzals!

We’ll be back to the beach here in another week, and, from then on, will rotate between lowlands and highlands each week for the next couple months. It looks like a nice schedule. Definitely excited to see someplace new, maybe get out of the rain for a while (we were rained out again today), and keep banding awesome birds!

The rain let up enough for us to band a full six hours this morning, and we were rewarded with this awesome male Red-capped Manakin – almost the last bird of 2010. (The very last bird we banded today, if you’re curious, was a Kentucky Warbler.)

This is going to sound very nerdy, but Ed and I are excited that every bird in the entire world will have a birthday tonight. Officially, “hatch year” birds will become “second year” birds on January 1. (Since you’re never sure exactly when they hatched, we age birds by the calendar instead.) More to the point, though, it’s already 2011 in some parts of the world; to all, a Happy New Year, and Pura Vida from Costa Rica!

It’s been raining for four days: Six inches so far, and another five inches predicted to fall by Wednesday. Ed and I spent a fairly miserable morning setting up mist nets in a downpour at 4:30 am, waiting five hours for a lull, then taking down the nets in another downpour without ever having opened them. The rest of the day was a sloshing, muddy, mosquito-infested slog in the jungle! A desk clerk at a neighboring lodge finally took pity on us (or thought we were scaring the tourists) and sent us home early with their own boatman.

A white Christmas it ain’t, but it’s an interesting way to spend the holiday. We ate dinner at a Canadian biological station and took the day off to wander around the swamp forest with a couple of British herpetologists who spent an hour trying to extract a snake from a rotten log, thigh-deep in mud. Ed and I managed to squeeze in a couple hours of bird banding yesterday and were utterly surprised to catch a Great Tinamou in late afternoon – only in Costa Rica!

I landed in Costa Rica on the coldest day in 15 years: it was 61 in San Jose. At least, though, I can understand people better here than in the Atlanta airport (where they were also complaining about the cold, I think).

I’m skipping this winter to band birds at various rainforest sites. I’ll get to see a bit of the country, though it’s not much bigger than Oregon (or maybe smaller?). Broadband recently hit the tiny Caribbean village of Tortuguero, so I’ll be able to post regular updates. Looks like it’s going to be a good season!