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After our dismal “lost day” yesterday we awoke hoping for a better trail.   The weather looked much better today with clear blue skies already showing by 7:30am.    Once the mist burned off the valley floor, it was a lovely day with the sun shining through the burnt trees.    The hiking here was actually quite good.  The burn trees were nice and open with lots of colorful fireweed shining brightly along the trail.   No real wildlife to speak of but lovely open woodland views.   

We soon hiked the 4 miles to Big Hidden Lake, the first of the three hidden lakes.   We encoutered several groups of people our our hike today – what looked like a hunter/guide snoring in the sunshine outside the guard shack followed by a group of men fly fishing in float tubes on middle hidden lake.    Compared to the first three days, this was a huge number of people in such a short time.

After leaving Big Hidden Lake, we saw our first bear sighting – Jilly was quite excited and would have run off after him had she been off leash.   This bear was pretty large too – at least 100lbs or more.    We then spent the next 30 minutes making lots of noise just in case he had friends along the trail.

Soon after First Hidden Lake we ran into a huge pack train of horses – three people and some 10 horses all heading in the direction of Hidden Lakes.    We assumed this was another High Hunt camp going in for the week.

From the Hidden Lakes we followed the trail passing Cougar Lake (no Cougars!) to reach our planned camping spot at Diamond Creek at 4pm.    This was a lovely little spot with a great deal of flat camping and ample water supply.   Here we met Dori, a lovely USFS Ranger who was just heading out for a 9 day wilderness patrol.   She was hoping to reach Hidden Lakes for the night be decided to join us in camping at Diamond Creek given the fading light.   We chatted with Dori for several hours learning about the USFS Rangers, patrol cabins and how the USFS regulates the Pasayten.  

The camp here was great and it was wonderful to have several hours to putter around getting things setup.    This was the first night where we’d arrived in camp and not been rushing for daylight to get things sorted.   The weather update from Dori was good for tomorrow – sunshine and clear skies for our final 9 mile hike out to Billy Goat Corral.