Day 67- we got up early to head out. Literally immediately we all got split up. I was with Scotty, Freckles, and Tim. Later we saw Hefty across the way and Javalou, and Sante. But Javalou and Hefty went ahead of us. We felt all cool because we took a fairly steep short cut and found ourselves on the trail, dry trail! And for awhile. It was so amazing. We also got to walk and see Devils Postpile a really interesting structure creating in rocks (pics above). We even went through a burn area which I always thinks looks pretty cool. So since Mt. Whitney the PCT and JMT have been connected. Later today they will split for about 12.5 miles. The PCT will stay higher on a ridge while the JMT will go back into the passes and lakes for a more scenic view. We’re hiking and it’s snowy and never see the junction. About 1.5 miles in we find out we are on the JMT. We talked about heading back but, the distances were the same between each trail. And a couple of south bound hikers said they had met quite a few PCT hikers who took the JMT to bypass a hard creek crossing on the PCT. They said the others were hiking up to the lake where there were tons of downed trees to cross on, then the back tracked a bush wacked to get back to the PCT. So we chose to stay on and just head up to the lake. The JMT is quite snowy, I don’t think the PCT would have been this snowy. We only made it about 7 miles once we got to the JMT. When we got to the lake we each took some different routes just dependent on what we felt was safest. I followed some guys from another group, we crossed probably 5 different logs going every which way and when we got to the other side we decided to stop and eat lunch. And decided to just stay on the JMT rather than bush wack. Why not since it’s the same distance??? We ended up camping at Shadow Lake, about 5 miles from where the PCT and JMT reconnect. Hopefully we will find the rest of the group there. But who knows. If they had dry trail they may be far ahead of us now?…who knows. There was a lot of mosquitoes here when we got here and literally within 60 seconds Tim and Freckles had made us a fire. What super heroes!!! This was a good night. It was nice to be with a small group, it’s much more personal and intimate. We laughed a lot, smiled a lot, and had a damn good view to look at.