We camped at the mouth of Waterfall Creek, which comes down from the lakes we had hiked from. Jim fished for trout in the river, caught two 20-inchers, but it was only catch and release. Jim always used barb-less hooks, which do very little injury to the fish. We made Jello® for dessert. I put the pot in the creek, which was cold enough to gel the hot solution in 15 minutes!

We got up early the next morning to get ahead of the heat. It had dropped to 40ºF at 4 a.m., an 80 or more degree drop! We put on our cold gear and hiked quickly (4 mph or so). When the sun started shining in the canyon, the temperature quickly rose as high as the previous day! When we got back to Terrace Lakes, it was cool and sunny again. We camped there. As I walked up high above the trail for unpolluted water, I walked within 75 feet of a 10-point buck. He raised his head to observe me and went back to grazing. When I came back down, he did not even look up!

The next day, we decided to go off trail and climbed up to the 9400-foot pass above our camp. At the top, on the other side, the path was blocked by a glacier. We worked our way to the side of the glacier and descended in the narrow gap between the ice and rock to Airplane Lake. We tossed our packs under the low branches of a pine tree where we would camp. We had dutifully carried our rain gear all week, and we did not even see a cloud the whole time! Jim wanted to hike down to Ship Island Lake where there were rumored to be golden trout. As soon as we got out of sight of our packs, big black ugly clouds rolled over the pass that we had just crossed! It started to rain and it was COLD! We walked on down to the lake, but no golden trout! When we got back to our packs, they were dry, and we set up camp.

The next day, Friday the 4th of August, we hiked out to our trail head and car after 44 miles of hiking for the week and drove back down to Challis, Idaho. We found a motel, got cleaned up, put on clean clothes and found a pizza place and got a good night’s sleep. The best part of civilization was the hot shower! We drove the 2248 miles back to Greenville, S.C., and were home by Sunday night.

That area of wilderness was set aside as federally protected in 1980 as the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area.