Because of Carina's altitude sickness and the approaching sunset, we decided to descend the main trail soon afterwards. With the help of Lee and Jacob, two summiteers from the main trail, we were guided down to the Crest trail. We continued on through the wee hours of the night down the 11 mile main trail. Carina's misfortunes continued as her headlamp broke the morning of our ascent. So we had to descend with one headlamp.
Needless to say, progress was slow but steady. We hit the famed 97 switchbacks with high spirits and managed to count 103 switchbacks. Once out of the switchbacks, we met a man named Frank whom we saw earlier descending the trail. He fed us popcorn, warmed us up, and gave us some beta for our descent. We thanked him for his hospitality and continued our twilight journey. By this time it was 12am.
Carina compared our descent to a dream. She knew she was awake but to her it felt like a peaceful, surreal dream where you wake up the next morning and do not realize how your arrive back from the hike. Our serenity continued on for hours until we got closer to Outpost camp, where the twilight night was broken up by streams of headlights making the early morning ascent.
We met many parties heading up the trail - a very large group of japanese "extreme" tourists with their PDAs and high-tech gadgets, a group of young teenagers lead by an older guide/parent, two older men making their 4th ascent, a young man and his father, and many more. When asked whether we were descending from the summit, we replied with brevity and a smile, "Yup, we started yesterday on the mountaineer's route, and are making our way down the main trail now."
It wasn't until just past 5am when we arrived back to the trailhead. We hiked almost 24 hours total! Luckily we still felt good, safe and secure. Our conditioning, preparation, regular food and water in-take on the hike, and the fair weather helped with our successful trip and good health. We felt the same joy and happiness at the end of our journey as when we were on the summit.