Summer Boot Camp Day 3

(click on any photo to enlarge) After a poor night of sleep I got up with the sun and started the water boiling for coffee. Christi slept better than I did and was packed and ready while I was still drinking my Joe. We still felt like we could bag two passes in a day and set off to tackle the south side of Pinchot Pass (12,130ft.). Within an hour we were on top. There were no real difficulties on either side of Pinchot and we set off down toward Lake Marjorie. The JMT drops down to the South Fork of the Kings River here and then starts the long climb to Mather Pass (12,100ft.). Mather from the North is, in our opinion, the second hardest Pass on the JMT. A tie for first is Muir from the South and Forester from the North. Luckily today our approach to Mather was from the South. We (I mean Christi) set a good tempo through Upper Basin in the shadow of Split and Cardinal Mountains. We were on top of Mather Pass at 2:30pm. Then began the LONG descent down Palisade Creek to the Middle Fork of the Kings. This downhill really enforced how long and difficult the North side climb is. From the top of the Pass, it is 10.2 miles to the entrance of LeConte Canyon and the Middle Fork of the Kings River.
The first part of the descent after Palisade Lake was the famous 'Golden Staircase". This was the last section finished on the JMT. It really is an engineering marvel. The trail builders managed to build a trail directly up an otherwise unusable, steep ass chute. When we climbed this a few years ago a deer climbed the whole Staircase about 100 yards in front of us all the way to the lake! We weren't so lucky today as it was the heat of the afternoon and the only company we had on the trail was the suffering Southbound JMT hikers that were climbing the Staircase late in the day hoping to make it to Palisade Lake. We managed to hike the entire way to LeConte Canyon making a daily total of 22 miles. Quite a day. Pretty tired tonight but we both hiked well today.