Camping at Big Bear Lake

This weekend we went camping again! Big Bear is a mountain city and lake in the San Bernadino National Forest and is only an hour to an hour and a half away from us. Unlike Lake Arrowhead, you can actually do some walks around it and get to the water without having to own property, it's a lot more wild. 

I knew it was going to be colder up there, especially at night. According to the weather forecast it was due to get down to only 4 degrees celsius! So I packed up all our warm layers and an extra blanket, hoping we'd be ok and picked Mitchell up straight from work. Big Bear is so popular, when we booked back in August, the first and only dates we'd been able to book (before it got even colder) were the Thursday and Friday nights. We traversed the rush hour traffic, but it wasn't too long before we were up into the mountain roads. Because we'd set off in the evening, we got to see an amazing sunset as we climbed higher, the whole mountinside turned red as the sun sank below the city we'd left behind. 

When we arrived, it was already pitch black and getting cold. Fortunately, we've put up the tent a few times now, and it's super easy, so it wasn't long before we were set up and eating dinner. Away from the cities, we could see the stars through the trees, but it was late and growing colder so we tucked up for the night. We also found out that our sleeping bags zip into one, which made it warmer to snug up together. 

Putting the tent up in the dark

That night it got VERY cold. We both woke up during the night to add extra layers and had cold feet the whole time. In the morning, I checked the weather and found it had actually reached -1 degrees! A whole 5 degrees colder than we had planned for! But I'd brought hot chocolate and sausages to cook for breakfast and between that and the sun, we soon warmed up. 

Cold chef at work

Our big hike for the day was up Cougar Crest Trail to a peak in the mountains where we'd get a view of the lake below. Being a Friday, it was pretty quiet on the trail, although we did see a few other people on our way up. It was pretty easy going (or maybe we've just got better at hills) and we made it to the top in time for lunch. This hiking trail ended at a peak which had some sort of satellite tower on it, but there was no information, so who knows? The views were very impressive and we could see the other mountains across the valleys, one of which looked like it already had snow on top!

It just keeps going!

Mitchell guarding the bags from bears

Snow? or pale ground?

Probably searching for aliens

On the way up and down, we passed a crossroads which intersected our path with the Pacific Crest trail. This trail runs all the way down the west coast, from Canada to Mexico. We didn't walk it, but it would be fun to do a section at one point!

This man almost took the route to Mexico

Searching for the next snack stop

By the time we got back to our campsite, we were ready for our dinner and started cooking. Once done, we decided on an early night to get to sleep before it got too cold. We made some changes to help us stay warmer, we put on all of our layers, put the blanket inside the sleeping bag instead of over the top, and tied up the end corners of the sleeping bag so that there was less space for our feet to heat. All this worked for me, especially as I could cocoon my entire body inside the bag, but Mitchell couldn't lie straight and keep his head inside, so he was still a little chilly. 

We did both wake up in the night though and heard a howling close by. There were a few dogs we'd seen in the campsite, but this sounded different, with a distinctive yap-howl. My suspicions were confirmed when this howl was greeted by the howls of an entire pack! It was very cool to hear a coyote pack, we just hoped that the one we heard close by was lost and not calling its pack to us!

In the morning, we warmed up on hot chocolate again and then went for a walk before we had to check out. There was a nice bike path which bordered the campsite which we'd taken yesterday to get to our hiking trail, but this morning we took the other direction. There's a solar observatory right on the lake which we could see, but not get to, and we could walk a little way along the lake shore. There were a few people out boating, but it's a big lake and was so quiet that morning. We watched a heron (or some sort of big watery bird) catch a few fish for its breakfast and carried on along the trail. 

Solar observatory

This bird had extremely creepy feet

The trail through the woods

I'd seen that there was a discovery centre nearby, but that it was closed for renovations. Even so, we thought it would be a nice walk to take and they might have maps outside (I'm starting a collection of all the places we've been). It was a very nice shady walk and we were soon warm with all of our layers still on. It might be below freezing at night, but the sun is still strong and got to a pleasant 20 degrees each day. The centre was indeed closed, but they had an information point with volunteers and maps, so we were able to learn a bit more about the area and collect a map. 

Charlotte (our car) didn't seem to like the cold or the altitude either and took a while to get started. We eventually did, but decided to not stop on the way home like we had planned, but head straight home and visit a garage on Monday as it would probably be pretty hard to get someone to fix her up a mountain at the weekend. We were only going to stop off in the town of Big Bear to have a look around, and the route we took home we drove through it anyway. It's so close as well, we'll definitely be back! 

All in all, a chilly, but pretty weekend. We will definitely visit Big Bear again, and hopefully we'll be able to get a spot during the summer next time we go camping! 

Lots of love,

Emily and Mitchell

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PS. I leave you with this wiggly caterpillar which was the size of my finger