Day 11: Palisade Lakes to Le Conte Canyon
11.4 miles, 680 ft elevation gain, 2705 ft elevation loss

It was still drizzling off and on when we woke up in the morning, so no colorful sunrise and we slept in. We had an easy day today, so didn’t have to rush. We packed up camp and made our way down to lower Palisade Lake and on to the famous Golden Staircase. The Golden Staircase was the last section of the JMT completed in 1938 and certainly took some ingenuity and hard work to construct the series of steep switchbacks up the cliff (a 1500 foot ascent). Normally the views would be great as we descended, but yet again we were foiled by some overcast skies. For the second, and last, time on the trip we donned our rain gear when a rain shower came out of nowhere. Like yesterday it was brief and it did not slow us down too much.

At the bottom of the staircase we continued through Deer Meadow, which was a hassle on account of all the deadfall we had to climb over or go around. We eventually made it to the junction at the Middle Fork of the Kings River (this is where we would have joined the JMT if we had done our original plan of the Big SEKI loop). We took a break here amid the large pinecones and trees. At this point we had done the bulk of our hiking for the day; it was eight miles to here and we had an easy going 3.4 miles left to our campsite in Le Conte Canyon. We followed the Middle Fork through Grouse Meadow and slowly up 680 feet to the Le Conte Canyon ranger station. The ranger station is at the junction of the trail to Bishop Pass we would take the next day when we made our exit from the JMT. This campsite was probably the buggiest one and I retreated to the tent to read for a bit. Steve saw some white water kayakers go down the Middle Fork (!! - looked like a crazy ride!) and met our fellow campmates, Jeff and Jeremy. We enjoyed a pleasant evening around the campfire chatting with them. It was nice meeting so many friendly people on our trip.

Day 12: Le Conte Canyon to South Lake (via Bishop Pass)
12.8 miles, 3222 ft elevation gain, 2152 ft elevation loss

This it it - our last day! Food, drinks, hot showers, and beds await us, but first we would have a seven mile, 3200 ft climb from Le Conte Canyon to Bishop Pass. We said goodbye to the JMT and started our climb out of Le Conte Canyon. The views got better and better as we climbed and Dusy Basin was very pretty as well. Although I don’t think any of us were in a mood to really appreciate it as we were on a mission. We initially thought we would camp one night in Dusy Basin, but realized trailhead fever would set in that close to South Lake, so figured we would just hike out. We were all on board with the plan, but for awhile I wasn’t sure we would make it (it was one of the few times Norah needed a motivational pep talk). Norah rallied though and we did make it.

When we finally reached Bishop Pass we were treated to some great views, especially of Bishop Lakes once we started hiking down the other side of the pass. We had one last snowfield to cross; this was the biggest one we encountered on our trip. The hike down was very pretty. We passed by multiple ponds, lakes, and streams. As we neared South Lake we noticed it was hazy from smoke. We were lucky that while there were various wildfires in the Sierra Nevada, they didn’t impact our trip and this was the first evidence of smoke we saw on the trail. It was six miles down from the pass and we made good time - we were certainly motivated! It felt pretty amazing to finish our twelve day trip. We did it!

We had planned to give a ride to a fellow hiker, Keith, who we had seen the last few days of the trail. He was exiting the trail to try to reconnect with his son and was hiking ahead of us. By chance we met his son Justin coming up the trail as we were coming down and surprised him by asking if he was looking for Keith. There was some confusion as to where everybody was, so in the end we told Justin we would wait for him in the parking lot to give him a ride back to Bishop (we found out later they were able to make connections). In Bishop we gobbled up a meal at the Mountain Rambler Brewery then drove the sixty miles back to Lone Pine, then back up the windy road to Horseshoe Meadows to retrieve our other rental car. Between the rocks on the road, it being dark on the way down, and the lightning show in the distance, it was an interesting ride. We got a cheap room in town and luxuriated in hot showers and beds. And that’s a wrap on the JMT portion of our trip!