IMAP via SSH via dial-up?

[Michael Hipp]

Would this work or would it be so slow as to be unusable?

Explanation: I now have 4 locations (4 machines) where I spend enough time 
working that I need to monitor my e-mail while there. Downloading the same 
e-mails to 4 different machines and sorting through what is new or not is 
unbearable. Some of the locations only have dial-up. I don't want to open any 
holes into my main server to anything other than SSH - it's the one thing I 
truly trust.

So can I set up IMAP on my server, use fetchmail to download the stuff, and 
then port-forward SSH into it so I can see my email from Thunderchicken? (I'm 
just not really familiar with how IMAP works.)

Thanks,
Michael