September 2, 1996 Monday
Setting up camp at Lake 11939 at about 5:30. The grassy meadow Jan described turned out to be just barely large enough for 3 tents. The area seems new even though I passed thru here in 1984 when coming out of the Ionian Basin.
About 6:30 saw 2 guys coming down the slope behind us. Seems that a girl in a climbing party broke her foot when a large rock detatched. Then 2 more climbers came down the slope to our right. Same party, they were headed to their base camp on the penninsula that juts out on Helen Lake. The penninsula can be seen a couple of photos back. They had radioed for a helocopter, but when it came, it couldn't land and flew off. They had used ham radio (2 meters?) to contact someone in Bishop who relayed to some army base, etc. Later about 8:00, 2 guys came from our right (almost dark, just barely enough light to see). They said that the girl had been lifted out when the copter came back about 6:00.