Lake Ann — Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2020

Had a lovely trail run up to Lake Ann today. Conditions are as follows:

- Road to TH: in the morning alternatively dry and icy/snowy. Slush pile on the way down at 2pm.

- Trail: couple blowdowns here and there but overall not bad. Lower part of the trail was pretty icy for about the first 0.5 miles but that gave way to nicely packed snow beyond that. Really only a couple of inches on the trail and a lot of it was melted out by the afternoon and was pretty muddy/soggy on the way down. Traction and poles might be useful for the morning, coming down wasn't too bad.

- Routefinding: once the trail to Lake Ann diverged from Esmeralda, there was only a couple of bootprints up which I followed for a ways before realizing that they were going the wrong way. After referencing Gaia and realizing I could vaguely make out the contours of the trail under the snow, I put in a set of tracks that goes the right way. Once you approach the ridge you'll see a few prints that veer left, but those are wrong. (They may have made it up to the ridge but I'm not sure) My out and back trail is decent though. 

Didn't make it all the way down to the iced over lake. Larches are mostly done for the season, but it was beautiful up there with mild weather until I got on top of the windy and cooler ridge. Beautiful view of Esmeralda and Glacier. 

I imagine this trail will undergo some pretty significant freeze/thaw so plan accordingly with your gear.