Day 65

Camped at1026.2, 8129 feet
20.25 Miles
  A big up in the morning, beautiful views back into the Sierra. You can really tell that we are leaving  the high Sierra behind now, the scenery is changing.

Lots of flowers today

Some sketchy snow fields coming down from the ridge line and some even more sketchy ones coming down from another ridge line into Sonora pass. Not so sketchy as to make me nervous, I was more nervous for Forrester and a few other spots but this one... if you slipped, the slide wouldn't be a fun one, pretty scary looking rubble below a very steep snow field. The snow was softening up from its morning iciness but it wasn't slushy yet so it felt stable and safe enough.We'd definitely crossed worse with no problem. There was a large group of hikers (6) sitting on the rocks just before the traverse talking on their phones because this was the first spot with service in a week or so for some people.
A couple guys started looking at how to cross the ice field and they didn't like the steps that were already there for some reason but what they were attempting looked kinda stupid so I didn't follow them. I went to the pre-made steps. They weren't the greatest so I took my time and made sure each foot hold was kicked in hard and each step and trekking pole was solid before moving to the next one. It was a very slow process but it felt safe and comfortable to me. Emily followed behind with the same method, slow and cautious. One of the guys realized what they were doing was dumb and fell in behind me using my steps and thermo girls who just got off the phone (and may have been a bit distracted by that) started the traverse behind the guy. I was maybe 20 feet out when the first girl started screaming from ten feet below, she had slipped and was sliding and was picking up speed. She screamed and panicked, flailed around a lot and continued sliding and only stopped after a few feet of sliding on sharp scree. She was very panicked and cut up but basically okay, very lucky. Her friends calmed her down from above and we felt they had the situation under control so we kept moving, slowly and carefully, but a little shaken up. The second girl slipped only a few feet further but only fell 6 feet down and was trying to get back to my foot steps... It seemed fairly futile and she should have just done a slow and controlled glacade down to the other girl but she kept trying to get back up. By the time we had crossed the first snow field the second girl went careening down the side of the pass and onto the rocks. We were pretty far away at this point but we heard the first girl call up that she was okay too, just scraped up a lot. One of the guys did a planned slow and controlled self arrest down to help them and then we went around a boulder and left the drama behind. We heard later that the second girl might have broken a wrist and the first girl lost her phone and at least one of them was quitting the trail. We also heard a few others had issues with the pass, Z did a planned glacade, another guy fell and slid down like the girls and a few other stories.

Scene of the dramatic incident (note the girl in the middle/right third)

Crazy that there was so much hype and warnings about all the other passes and the one at the end  no one ever mentioned is the one that got people. Maybe people had just gotten over confident or distracted or rushed it, I'm not sure but it didn't seem that bad, a little extra care was needed for sure.  We got down just fine.

Cool plant

 Ran into a guy training llamas to rent to JMTers.

Getting over the second pass of the day was another mess entirely. The snow was very soft and was everywhere. We lost the trail a few times and postholed a lot. Finally got below the snow line and the miles came a little quicker.

Ran into Mamasita from back in the Angeles mountains, she camped with us tonight. Stormchaser walked by and told us he had run into Pizza Taxi and Party Log yesterday! They are a day ahead of us. Had a nice fire and played cribbage, I lost.

Time for new shoes and socks