Great trip report. Glad everyone in all groups got back down safely. My own experience with the 2 miles between Trail Crest and the summit is that it seems like it takes forever on the return trip primarily during that last half-mile of uphill between the JMT junction back up to Trail Crest.

CaT

If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them more than the miracle of technology. We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it.
- Lyndon Johnson, on signing the Wilderness Act into law (1964)