Although the skies above were clear this morning, we decided to get an earlier start in case it got smoky later on. We were all up by 6:30am, so we had a few hours to relax before breaking camp, and we were packed and ready to roll by 9:00. We had a couple of options by which to return to our car at the trailhead: a) we could retrace our steps from the hike in, or b) we could hike down the South Fork drainage some 3-1/2 miles to the Cottonwood Lakes trail and go out from there. The latter option sounded more appealing, but we did not have a lot of information about it – we had seen what we suspected was the unsigned junction with the South Fork trail just after crossing that creek on the way in, but the trail doesn’t appear either on the default GPS map or on the USGS quad (it does show up on a couple of GPS layers on Chris’ app, but, since he didn’t download those layers ahead of time, all we could see was a blurry line indicating the general route). We expected we could head east off the plateau, then follow the signed South Fork Lakes trail southwest and pick up the phantom trail somewhere in that vicinity – then, as we pondered the map a little more, we realized that the South Fork Lakes lay just a 1/2-mile south of our camp site and should be an easy cross country jaunt that would save us mileage and time. So, 9:00am saw us head due south up the low rise above our camp, over a couple more knobs, and down to a gorgeous meadow below the lowest South Fork lake. We suspected the South Fork trail would be found at the east end of the meadow, so we stayed in the treeline and made our way eastward along the meadow’s edge – sure enough, we came across a path that followed the lake’s outlet (the South Fork of Cottonwood Creek) down a steep-ish headwall at the north end of the creek’s canyon leading south. We followed the semi-ducked route down the slope thinking we’d perhaps found a use trail, but better trail was beyond as we reached the canyon floor, and our GPS track matches the mapped route exactly. The walking from here can only be described as very easy – the next 2-1/2 miles were an alternating sequence of flat meadows with sandy trails and gentle downhills through rock gardens and lodgepole groves. About half a mile from the main trail, Chris came upon a log hut he’d seen before in online photos – no idea how long this has been here or for what purpose it was constructed, but Dani and Carter had come by earlier and made a closer inspection, reporting there was a sleeping platform inside and that the logs were notched at the corners. Chris found the much-faster walkers at the main trail junction, right where we had thought it would be, and Chris passed the car keys to them since they’d probably beat him back by 20 minutes at least. Chris did slow even further up the last hill, his hips hurting again after so much sand (he thinks that’s the key factor, along with the full load, since it considerably alters his gait), but he made it up and over, finding Carter and Dani at the Explorer with the AC pumping. The drive out was horribly ugly – the huge views we expected to have coming down the Horseshoe Meadows road were obliterated by thick smoke that literally filled the Owens Valley, and it was nearly like driving in fog down the mountain until we reached Lone Pine, where the visibility increased from a few hundred feet to maybe a mile. We grabbed some lunch in Lone Pine and got out of Dodge, not clearing the low-lying smoke until west of Ridgecrest on Hwy 14. Despite the smoke, this was a really enjoyable outing – the high passes were spectacular, and we were bummed that Jane and Pedro couldn’t make it. Maybe next season, hopefully without COVID and flaming forests, we’ll make a return visit (and tag both Langley and Cirque – go us).