Kearsarge Exit to Bishop

After Forester Pass, the trail dropped down a couple of thousand feet. The scenery quickly changed from jagged gray rock to a lush green valley. Bubbs Creek meanders through the valley with a shallow run, nice gentle sounds, and green grass along its banks. Junction Peak and the new drama of Kearsarge Pinnacles is visible through the trees. It’s very beautiful.

Looking southeast, down onto Bubbs Creek and Vidette Meadow.

With all the water, you might expect the number of mosquitos to be particularly unpleasant. But there were surprisingly few of them along Bubbs Creek. Sometimes a week can make a huge difference in the volume of mosquitos. Maybe we just got lucky. We climbed up and out of Vidette Meadow to a flat plateau under Mt. Rixford. We had planned to turn off the PCT here and exit the Sierras via Kearsarge Pass for a resupply. But my fishing gear was burning a hole in my pack, and so we went to Charlotte Lake instead.

Me pointing toward Charlotte Lake in the opposite direction to our planned Kearsarge Pass turn-off.

Lake Charlotte was beautiful. We spent three hours there fishing its clear water. Hardly any mosquitos. Great campsites. Caught a few fish and we boiled them up, added a bit of insta-butter and ate like kings for the second time that day. We needed the fuel. We wanted to get out to Bishop today and at 7pm we still faced several miles to hike out.

I got in some good fishing at Lake Charlotte. We stayed 3 hours.

We packed up and headed back to our turn-off as the sun was getting low in the sky. Crossing back over the PCT and heading east along Bubbs Creek trail, we quickly came to Bullfrog Lake… and all the mosquitos! Wow. It’s an incredibly beautiful lake but bug repellent is an absolute necessity.

The bugs and setting sun meant we didn’t stay too long. The trail angles up from Bullfrog, and we got a great view of the northern side of Kearsarge Pinnacles and their namesake lake.

Kearsarge Pinnacles at dusk. Kearsarge Lake is in the foreground.

Not too much further up along the trail was Kearsarge Pass, at nearly 12,000 feet. Some well meaning person had left a very heavy mallet there, presumably to smash some rocks if the mood was right. Dad and I took a few swings with it, but didn’t manage to smash anything. It was our second pass for the day; we might have been tired but maybe we were in too fun a mood :).

Dad taking a swing at it on Kearsarge Pass.

All set to night hike off Kearsarge Pass.

It got cold in a hurry after the sun went down, and we geared up for it on the pass. Then down the other side we went, finally stopping to camp on a rocky ledge along the trail above Heart Lake. In the morning we would head out to the trail head, and look for a ride into Bishop.

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