(Saturday, October 13, 2001) Finally, I arrived at Bear Lake. My registered destination was actually a couple of miles further on (and up higher, too), but I decided to camp here, even though the day wasn't very late, because I had to pick up Danielle at 2:30pm at San Francisco International Airport on Sunday (about a 4 hour drive from the trailhead). Even more so than in the previous pictures, the granite around Bear Lake is the most predominant feature. It is extensive. The trees are trying to make inroads, but there isn't much soil for them.
You can see the cliff face in the left-center of the picture. Just to the left of it, there was a small forest fire, which I hiked up to after setting up camp. My afternoon trek was to hike up to the forest fire for some pictures, get some closeups of the rock faces, then back down to circumnavigate the lake. I arrived back at camp shortly after sunset, before the light faded. The water actually wasn't too cold. I waded in and rinsed off after my trek.