First I'd like to thank whomever has worked on this trail recently! The re-worked tread is looking great on the lower section, many signs of cleared drainages, and the flagging on the upper half indicates a lot more work to come next season on this heavily used trail.
It was a beautiful fall day with no rain and light clouds. We pretty much had the trail to ourselves hiking in with only a couple cars in the parking area on our arrival. The lake was very beautiful surrounded by light snow and all the branches of the trees where outlined with frost. This is a popular trail and we passed many folks on our descent on their way up to the lake and there were a dozen cars at the bottom by mid-afternoon.
The trail was snow free for about the first 1.5 miles and about 3-4"" of snow at the lake. The course is free of blow-downs except for a jumbled mass of stumps on the trail that leads around the lake (to the right at the forks as you arrive a the lake). It can be carefully climbed over if you'd like to circumnavigate the lake.
Mud-holes were infrequent and minor except for one large one near the approach to the lake which has a 10' detour trail bushwhacked around it. One creek crossing in the lower half of the trail had a small slide taking a chunk of the trail with it but a narrow detour is available on the downhill side of the slide.
The biggest obstacle of the day was ice--take care as this is a wet trail and very icy at this time of the year as the temperatures dip below freezing at night.
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