Grouse Meadow - Lower Helen Lake 7/1/10 7 miles

Two weeks in the woods. They have been long and hard. We thought we'd be in te hiking groove by now, but we are still learning all the passes and the Sierras are our principal. You must do what they say. We started this morning about 7am and had a good 4 miles before break. Break was long and we discussed many stressful topics about the trail, our plans and expectations and how they have panned out. We continued on and took another break at 11:15am. This one lasted for three hours. More stress, figuring out whether we were happy out here and alternate plans if not. The pass was three miles away, but we couldn't bring ourselves to do it. Low on food, energy and motivation, we took naps. Finally got up at 3pm and make it to the campsite before the pass. Turns out, the actual campsite was where we took our break. Ended up in a small patch of dry land "free of snow", and had to move many rock to make space for our tent. Frozen Lake beside us and snow all around. Kristi had to talk me into not backtracking and staying here. We had seriously debated going 4 miles back to the ranger tent and seeing if he could a) get us more food, b) give advice, or c) get us off the trail. Muir Pass, while not the tallest, does have the most miles of snow and we are sick of it. Yogi said if you don't go across it by 2pm, you will be postholing for hours. We're a day and a half behind schedule this week due to the snowy passes. Took another nap. Some friends we met on the top of Kearsarge came in at 5pm and made the push on to Muir. We discussed the trail and our growing tiredness of the snow. They gave us a couple of candy bars to help us out. They're shooting for Mammoth on Sunday and we are on Tuesday, because of our slowed pace. On a lighter note, I built a couple of rock walls on the snowy plateau. One around our tent and made another smaller site too. After dinner and had light conversation. Must get some rest for our long day tomorrow. Wish us luck. CM