I really love the Copper Glance Lake trail. It’s a lovely thigh burner early in the season. The trail starts off straight up hill, and is made a little more difficult this spring by about 10 blow downs during the first mile. Most of them are easy to step over or crawl under, but one or two could be tricky.
We encountered patchy snow at 5,100 (one switchback below the mine). These patches are all super easy to cross, and no longer than about 100 feet. The patchy snow continued off and on until the meadow, where it was completely melted out and super green. From the meadow to the second creek crossing, there were so larger snow patches, but still a lot of bare dirt. From the second creek crossing onward, it was mostly consistent snow with a few melted out spots. Even at 8am we were punching through to mid-thigh a lot here. Just before the lake, there is a cliffy section you go up (before heading straight back down). At this point, the snow was way too steep for our dogs to safely navigate, so we took the snow around and then up. Once you start heading back down, the snow is gone until you reach the lake basin. The lake basin is melting quickly, making for lots of weak snow, especially around all of the rocks.
The lake was mostly still frozen and beautiful, and we didn’t see another person all day. The wildflowers were blooming on the lower parts of the trail, but the shoots were just popping up in the meadow. There were tons of baby mushrooms in the forest sections.
As the previous trip report mentioned, there is a lot of running water of the road just past Honeymoon Campground. There are three sections of it, and it looks like a creek is trying to change its path to cross the road instead of staying in the drainage provided. We had no issues crossing it in our SUV, and I would probably take a car across it (but I don’t drive one, so I’m not sure on that).
Edited to add - we did the trail in trail runners and were just fine. There was never any need for snowshoes or microspikes. Poles might have been useful in a few places.
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