Short summary: started the hike at 7:30 am cold icy, need crampons personally but relatively doable without. Snow is pretty compact. Took me about 2 hours 15 minutes up and 2 hours down. Snow intermittently spread through the trail. Lake looks beautiful and not frozen at all. Mini avalanches through to look at here and there.
I tried going up without Crampons and quickly realized I was going to be very annoyed slipping and going slow so I threw them on. There’s ice and snow intermittently through the trail so I kept them on the entire time but it did suck sometimes when it was just rocks. About half way or a little more than half way in you start see some of the trail deteriorating because of the previous weather with steps washed out and branches and trees on the trail. The worst is about a quarter mile from the lake there’s a tree toppled over that you had to hop over but it’s not terrible. Lake was beautiful as usually and I took my time sitting on the big boulder for an hour or so until I started my decent around 11:30. Everything was slowly melting by then and the need for crampons lessened but I still kept the on because I was too lazy to take them off. By the end of the hike it was a lot more slushy and muddy but still very doable.
Comments