Unfortunately, once we got down far enough, the gully opened up to the left instead of the right.  By now the cloud had gone away and we immediately knew we were in the wrong place because we could see the lakes far below.  The chute we had climbed/slid down was pretty awful, so instead of trying to climb back up, which would have been really difficult at best, we decided to continue downward and hope there was a way all the way down to the lakes.  At about 7 pm we knew we were going to be spending the night.  We were totally cliffed out with no way down, and there was not enough daylight left to make it all the way back up. Both of us felt it was much too dangerous to try to climb using headlamps.  We carefully climbed up about a hundred feet and finally found a small ledge to spend the night on.  The location had two important criteria -- we were protected from rockfall by a large overhanging boulder at our backs, and we weren't in imminent danger of rolling off if we actually fell asleep -- so we settled in before we completely lost the light.  Once we had unpacked our meager supplies, we signaled with my whistle and Kathy's headlamp.  Some campers at the lake noticed us and signaled back.  I tried to shout that we were OH-KAAYYY, but one of them took a photo of our location and ran it 7 miles down to the ranger station.  On the ranger station computer, they brightened the photo to see our location better.

Later we found out the supervising ranger had at first assumed we had to be a technical climbing party, and he didn't intend to send any help.  Then my husband Chris called to report us missing and explained that we didn't climb with ropes, which made the ranger a little more concerned.  Meanwhile, Kathy and I were spending the night at Motel Zero with the things we had brought.  Fortunately we both had several layers of clothes, including a warm hat or hood, and gloves.  I had a tank top, a short-sleeved shirt, long underwear top, fleece pullover and warm Marmot windbreaker, along with long nylon pants and my cotton shorts.  Kathy had some similar layers.  I also had packed an emergency poncho while Kathy had a space blanket that could cover both of us.  We emptied our packs and sat on them, and covered up with all our stuff.  We needed everything we had, including each other's body heat, to stay almost warm.  If any one item got dislodged we would start shivering for a while.  There was not enough room to lie down and it was too dangerous to stand, not to mention we'd get colder if we stood, so it was an uncomfortable if bearable night.  We saw several really cool shooting stars from the Perseid shower, though.  The weather remained good - how lucky was that.  Only a very light breeze sometimes and no precipitation. We dozed a little, but not much.  About once an hour we checked the time and joked about calling room service.
 
Once it was light enough in the morning, we packed up and started looking for a way up to the ridgeline so we could get back over to the other side of the mountain.  Not too far from Motel Zero we found a very steep chute heading straight up and we decided to give it a try.  A lot of the granite was crumbling, but there was enough good rock to eventually get us close to the top.  Up to that point it was Class 3 with some Class 2.  Near the top, we encountered a Class 4 obstacle where we had to get past a big vertical rock with no handholds which was between two rock walls.  There was a small rock jammed between the right wall and the big rock, but too high to get up on.  Kathy tried to chimney up, which she's usually very good at, but she couldn't make it.  I made a stirrup hold for her foot with my hands and gave her a boost.  She went ahead to find out what was on the other side of the ridge.  I said if we could get down the other side, I would find a way to get myself over the obstacle.  She came back in 30 seconds and said we could totally get down and she could even see our footprints from the day before!  So I handed up my pack, braced my foot up on the left wall about level with my head, and did some contortionist move I couldn't even begin to describe.  I finally got my knee up on the small rock, braced my hands somewhere and miraculously got past the obstacle.  I really doubt if I could have done it in normal circumstances.  To say that we were happy to be back on the correct side of the ridge is a big understatement!!

We got back on the trail about 9 am after a brief rest stop for breakfast.  As we approached the first switchback below Franklin Pass, we heard our names being called.  Two handsome young rangers had hiked up that morning to look for us, and they were calling up the cliffs to Motel Zero.  We shouted back that we were on the trail and they finally heard us.  They couldn't believe we were on the trail.  One of them was a technical climber himself, and he couldn't figure out how we had extracted ourselves with no ropes.  When they didn't hear or see us up there, they assumed we had fallen off during the night and it was going to be a bad outcome.  Kathy and I looked incredulously at the cliffs where we had been perched.  We located the most likely chute we had climbed up and pointed it out to the ranger.  He said we were badass!  The more we looked up at where we were the night before, the less we could believe we had actually been there and gotten out.  In Secor's latest edition of High Sierra Peaks, Passes and Trails, there is a photo of this mountain face which identifies the route we were on as "Rampant".  The rangers told us that they found us minutes before the helicopter would have started its rotors to begin a search for us.  They also gave us pbh (peanut butter & honey) sandwiches and homemade zucchini bread.  Thanks, Evan and Thor - you totally rock, guys!!
 
So there you have it - Kathy and Alice now have an official "badass" designation from the National Park Service.  When we got home and told Chris, he said he had a slightly different name for us in mind.
 
I think the biggest mistake I made was not getting out my compass to figure out which way we were going.  I had gotten lazy by always being able to use the GPS to navigate.  But unless you are walking in a straight line, the little arrow on the GPS is not necessarily turned in the direction you are traveling.  Boulder hopping fools it.  I should have zoomed out on the GPS until I could view Franklin Pass on the topo.  Then we could have gotten a decent compass reading and just stayed on that heading.  Of course, that is all speculation.  Our navigation was not all that far off and we may have made the same error trying to hold a compass bearing on boulders.  A small error had big consequences.  We have learned from our mistake.