Lower Helen Lake - S. Fork San Joquin 7/2/10 15 miles

Much better day today. We headed out early in order to make use of our crampons on the frozen snow and to avoid any postholing in slush. The entire hike up to Muir was covered in snow. No trail, Just footprints. Fortunately, intelligent foot prints. There were several false summits, gut we were prepared for them. We followed the footprints to the top. Not a bad climb at all. It took us about two and a half hours to get there, but compared to the other passes, this one was fairly simple. We reached the top and hung out at the Muir Hut, one of the only shelters on the entire trail. A stone hut with benches on the inside, fire place and wooded door. It was built in 1930 in memory of John Muir. After relaxing, snacking and discussing relief of an easy climb, we made our way to the bottom. Completely snow covered for 5 miles. This was a four hour adventure of carefully watching each step. As you could imagine, we were pretty happy to get to actual trail and remove our crampons. We found a nice spot under a shade tree, by an alpine lake and hung out to eat lunch. We were spectators while a couple of fearless marmots came close in hopes to get a snack. One attempted to munch on the handle of my trekking pole and we had to shew it away. We continued our walk, mostly flat and downhill. We discussed random topics, future plans, our families and kept informing one another of the songs that popped into our heads (which happens frequently.) We arrived at Evolution Creek and the water was currenly chest deep. Not feeling that extreme, so we found an alternate crossing on up the trail, which was only knww deep. After giong through a ton of bug spray and swatting mosquitoes, we arrived at camp. WE will go to Muir Trail Ranch tomorrow in hopes of collecting enough food to get us through an extra unplanned day theat we've been out here. Feels good to have had a good day with more smiles. KB