Did a solo overnight to Bear Lake. Six cars in the parking lot when I arrived on Saturday at about 8:45am. It's quick hiking on the road for the 4 miles (it feels a little less than that) to the trailhead. There is one place where a creek flows over the road (by design) and must be waded. It's ankle deep or less.
Things slow down for the segment of the trail to the lake, which has a few big fallen logs to navigate and sometimes has poor tread. Once at Dorothy the trail improves a bit. When I passed by there were plenty of open campsites. The inlet to lake, however, is running fast right now. It's probably a 20 yard ford that is up to the mid-calf on somewhat slippery boulders. More nice campsites after that. Everything at Dorothy is snow free.
The trail from Dorothy up to the ridge is mostly fine with just a couple of blow downs, but then about 150' below the ridge you start hitting snow patches, which are at the annoying stage of blocking the whole trail but also post-holing every fifth step. But it's pretty manageable stuff. Over the ridge and down into the Bear-Deer Basin the trail continues to hit snow patches and is sometimes hard to follow. There's one nice campsite right on Bear Lake when you arrive, but the others (if there are any) seem to be hidden by snow or other obstructions.
I staggered around bushwhacking and post-holing -- it was very graceful -- for 30 minutes before I stumbled upon a nice little site right between Bear and Deer Lakes. I saw at least three other parties that looked like they were staying the night somewhere. Try as I might, I could not find trout in Bear Lake.
Cruised out in the morning and back to the trailhead, finding plentiful open campsites at Dorothy. Back at the car by 11:30am and there were maybe eight cars there.
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