My wife, our daughter, my father-in-law, my cousin, and I got a late start…930am…on Friday, July 1. It was about 75 degrees when we started. Horse Meadows was green and beautiful. We didn’t hit any above ground water source until we reached the creek convergence past the Lost Creek/Grinnel junction and that was flowing nicely. We continued up toward Dollar lake and about .20 mile before reaching the Dollar lake junction, there was small water flow across the trail that would be enough to refill water. We arrived to Dollar lake at about 1pm and it was dry as well as the spring that occasionally flows on the northern side of the lake.
We ran into Volunteer ranger Curtis about 3.5 miles in and then he re-united with us at Dollar lake. He was very friendly and brought back memories of when I was a SGWA volunteer many years ago.
It took us about 3.5 hours from the trail-head to Dollar lake and we only ran into one fallen tree at about 2 miles in (before the wilderness area) which had a trail routed around it.
It was a smooth hike back down. It was a very nice day, but a late start considering it was a bit warm (88 degrees at the warmest).