Camping at Bridger Lake

Our first camping trip of the season was to Bridger Lake on the north slope of Utah's Uintas mountain range. The campground is part of the Wasatch National Forest, just south of the Wyoming border and is a little above 9,000 feet in elevation. The picture below shows Katherine and Jeffrey on the west side of Bridger Lake. If you look closely you can see several people fishing for trout. Given the number of people we saw with full stringers of fish, I would say the lake has abundant trout.

The evenings were a bit on the cool side as you can see with the kids in their sweatshirts or the lovely picture of Sharon fully decked out for the early morning weather. She slept in her long johns and then put her shorts and sweatshirt over them to start her day. I felt very fortunate to have such a stylish camper with me ...


The campground itself was okay. The sites are a bit too close together and do not provide enough privacy for my taste. In addition, we ended up being next to a family reunion that had five families each with their own 30 foot camper, 5 ATVs per family, a couple of motorcycles and hoards of kids. It made for a very noisy campground, which was a shame given the serene surroundings we were in.

To compensate on Saturday we decided to drive further into the forest to see what else was to be seen and to look for some good hiking. Luckily for us there was plenty to be found. Driving south a couple of miles on the forest road brought us to China Meadows. The picture below is of China Meadows. You can see the stream flowing through which is part of the East Fork Smith's Fork drainage.


To the west of this meadow is the China Meadows campground. The campground has about six or seven sites and was completely unoccupied when we stumbled across it. It appears that the sites were on a first come, first serve basis and would only work for tent camping. We found one site off to one corner that appeared to be very nice. It was right above a little lake and offered a good bit of privacy if one is willing to put their tent a bit up the hill from the fire bit in a stand of Ponderosa pines. We came very close to picking up our stuff at Bridger Lake and moving, but time got the best of us and we never got around to it.


Just to the south of China Meadows the road ends in a major trailhead that leads much deeper into the Uintas. From the trailhead you can access Red Castle and the Red Castle Lakes, Kings Peak, and Hessie Lake. We decided to hike in towards Hessie Lake, although we didn't think we would be able to make it the full 5.5 miles into the lake with the kids. As we hiked along the well marked trail we ran into a number of boy scouts that were coming back from several days at Red Castle. That appeared to have had a grand time, but were definitely ready to be back at the parking lot.

Although we were walking through a pine forest that provided decent shade, the day was very warm and the kids were hot. Luckily for us the trail ran parallel to the river, which we made sure to put to our full advantage!

The kids did much better than we expected and we were able to hike in almost three miles before turning around and heading back out. On the way back, we stopped at a bridge across the river and had a picnic lunch. Overall the woods were beautiful, the kids held up well, and the day was pleasantly successful. Below is another picture of the river.

Although I am not sure I would stay at that particular campground again, I can highly recommend the area.