Wednesday, Day 5 of our Foothills Trail hike started early. We had a great night of sleep at the Bear Gap campsite. We had about 11 1/2 miles to hike today, and enough food to get us through lunch. Without any difficulties, we should be able to get to the Bad Creek Access by the end of the day. The hike from Bear Gap to Horsepasture River, about 2 1/2 miles, was fairly flat until the last 1/4 mile. The trail drops 500' down to the river, and then crosses the river on a long bridge. Horsepasture river is a wide, lazy river peppered with large boulders... a beautiful site early in the morning. It seemed like our hiking buddies had decided to stay on the banks of the river last night. It didn't look like the most comfortable campsite, especially for a group of their size. For a second we felt guilty about taking the last good campsite, but it was their decision to move on last night

The 600' climb away from the river was just as steep as the drop down to the river. We were glad that we took the time to refill our water bottles in the river, as we were drinking a good bit during the climb. A lot of the remaining trail to Bad Creek is on old roadbeds, which makes hiking much easier. We hiked a couple miles, slowly climbing all the way, until we found a small stream crossing under the road. We decided to stop and eat our last meal along the trail. During our lunch stop, our hiking buddies started passing us again... it seems they decided to get up a little earlier this morning.

After lunch, we came to the Bearcamp Creek campsite, which is where we were supposed to stay the night before. This would have been a great campsite, if we could have made it this far. When we crossed Bearcamp Creek, there was a small sign saying that the trail here was rerouted. I'm not sure where the original route was, but the current route matched our map. The next mile after Bearcamp Creek was relatively flat, and followed the creek upstream to the Hilliard Falls spur trail. We decided not to hike to the falls, and reserve our energy for the remainder of our hike. Supposedly the falls were named after Glenn Hilliard, one of the founders of the Foothills Trail Conference, and it's first chairman.

Over the next couple of miles, the trail is mainly on old logging roads. There is a 500' climb away from Bearcamp Creek, and another 500' decent down to the Thompson River. There is a beautiful campsite on the bank of the river; this would be a great place to plan to stay next time we are here.

The next couple miles after Thompson River were pretty much all uphill. There is about a 700' elevation change from Thompson River to the spur trail for Lower Whitewater Falls. We have hiked in the area of Lower Whitewater Falls before, always starting at the Bad Creek Access, so once we reached this area we knew we were within reach. The last mile to the parking lot at the Bad Creek Access we were pretty much running on fumes, but we had something to look forward to when we got there!

Once at our car, we took a second to think back over the past 5 days. We had hiked 50 miles in 5 days and that was nothing to be ashamed of, given the mountains we had crossed. We made a decision to return home for the night, get cleaned up and then decide if we want to return in the morning. Our blisters had gotten significantly worse on the 5th day, and once we had showered and eaten 2 cheeseburgers each, we made the decision to end our hike here. With only about 30 miles remaining, we could finish our hike on another weekend... from what we have read, the hardest part of the hike is behind us. So, that is the story of our 1st experience on the Foothills Trail. We learned a lot from this hike, and we are looking forward to our next time on the trail!