The other trip reports cover the trail conditions well, so, I won't belabor that part. However, I'd like to describe the conditions when trying to hike around the lake itself.
I was trail running, not hiking (which just means I don't have any extraneous gear, like hiking poles).
Going clockwise, you'll be walking on ~2' of compacted snow, which at times is decently narrow (e.g.: going over the elevated walkway). This is doable.
If you continue a little further, you'll hit uncompacted snow.
As you traverse this section, you'll periodically drop into big "holes" in the snow (sections of the trail entirely absent of snow) where there's a lot of moving water underneath. The snow is 3' deep in these sections, so you'll be climbing down into a stream, walking through it, and then climbing up the other side.
As you begin to approach the 1/2 way point, that's when it becomes incredibly tricky. The trail has intermittent gaps in the snow that are ~20' in diameter, with rushing water in the gaps.
You'll need to descend from the snow (3'), drop into the water (2"-3"), then climb back onto the snow. Unfortunately, the snow is really unstable here, and I postholed up to my ribcage trying to proceed. I didn't think it was worth it to continue and turned around (which, truth be told, was disappointing).
I posted two short videos of the "inlet section" at the URL below, so you can see for yourself. They're in the "Lake 44" photoset (I ran to the lake twice, thus the "Lake 44" moniker / Go math!)
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