We met a hiker coming up who didn't like switchbacks, so he was just climbing straight up some very nasty talus. The trail down wasn't as steep as I had feared- much less so than Glen Pass, but I had to change socks and tape my big and little toes at the bottom. The Palisade Lakes were gorgeous. I got there about 1:00. I was tired so I lay down and retaped toes. Several people who had come up the Golden Staircase were prostrate on the ground and some were swimming! I wish we had had an extra day, because I would love to have hung out and camped there. It's so deep in the heart of the Sierra and difficult to reach without a lot of arduous hiking that I was reluctant to leave so readily.

Three and a half miles down the trail found us at the outlet of Lower Palisade Lake. The whole basin was simply gorgeous. We drank it in while munching on tortillas slathered with Super Peanut Butter. Across the stream from us some people were splashing naked in the water. One of their party sat in the shade of a Whitebark Pine and read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." And on our own side of the creek, four men looked as if they were survivors of a bomb blast. Sprawled on the grass, dead to all. Apparent victims of the "Golden Staircase" The sight of them did nothing to allay our apprehension about what was to come.

After lunch we packed up and headed down the relatively easy lead-in to the Staircase. I had the distinct impression (and I said so) that it was like skiing down the easy catwalk that provides the definitive access to the gut-wrenching double-black diamond cornice chute. We were committed. We were going down.

The "staircase" jig-jags down the steep, reddish-yellow cliffs alongside Palisade Creek-apparently the final, mind-boggling feat of engineering to occur in the construction of the JMT. Severe, to be sure, but in the end, not the hellish descent we'd anticipated.