Day 4 - Click on Map
Day 4 (July 29) started out with a brisk morning, since we were up at about 12,000 feet for camp. That would begin to be an ominous sign for me! We had about 3 miles and 1,200 feet to ascend Forester Pass in the morning and make our way north along the trail. From this point on most of our progress would be north as we were now set up for the five passes in five days schedule. As it turned out, I had another meltdown as we just started out on the ascent. This was definitely not blood sugars but sure didn't seem to be altitude sickness in the common form. Again Mike took the bear canister to lighten my load and I could tell this was not going to last much longer with him!

It was about a third of the way up that I thought seriously about backtracking and getting the heck out of here! Maybe I was just not cut out to do this type of hike, even with all of the conditioning I had done. We made it to the top of Forester in about 3 hours and it took much of what I had in the tank to make it. Going around those outside switchbacks near the top with wobbly legs was a test for sure. Once at the top I again felt fine. It seemed my altitude issues were associated with the strain of the climb. On top of the pass, we had some nice photo opportunities of the trip to the north and what we had hiked so far to the south. In looking over the pictures it always seemed that we took pictures of us on top of the pass, and I always looked beat!

The snow on the north side of the pass was not much of a concern. We made it through the first major patch with no probelms, just a few postholing down the way. The second patch was easier, it was just we had to cut some new trails to take the shortcuts! We ran into several southbound hikers on the way down the pass that day and they seemed eager to get their part of the hike done. We also ran into one gentleman near the top whose job is to survey the conditions of the bear boxes and report them to his crews. Sounds like a nice summer job! He had spent the day before in Center Basin with the rock and roll of the thunderstorms that were present every day. However, today would prove to be the break in the weather patter everyone was talking about. (Note: Weather patterns and their changes seemed to be the second most favorite trail lie that everyone had! The first being... you're almost to the top!)

We made our way down Bubbs Creek and stopped for lunch at the confluence of Center Basin and Bubbs Creeks. We also took the opportunity to pull out the rods and do a little bit of golden trout fishing. We plucked several nice ones from Center Basin Creek, as well as Bubbs Creek. We hit one pool that coughed up several goldens to each of us in succession! We traded casts into the pool with nearly a fish on each cast! This was definitely getting fun! My bout with the pass was behind me and we made our way down to Vidette Meadow and were tempted to stop and try the main body of the river for some brown trout but with it being about 4 pm, we wanted to make sure we could make the climb up to the Bullfrog Lakes area before dark. Stopping for a little brown action would impact our ability to make this climb and heck we would always get more chances for the browns later in the trip! Right?? (Wrong!!)

We headed up the hill towards Bullfrog Lake and actually went further up to dry camp near the junction to Charlotte Lake. If it hadn't been as late as it was, we would have likely wandered down to the lake and camped there, but the decision to camp where we did turned out just right! However, we both had to hump the water up from the creek near the Bullfrog Lake trail junction. Mule took the load with the 3.5 liter bladder whereas I got the lighter duty with the 2 one liter bottles.

To view photos of our trip please refer to the Photo Albums section of this site!