This trail is all stairs - our least favorite kind - those wooden boardwalks with gaps. Without researching the route first, we brought trekking poles, only to find they were completely useless and just extra weight. The first half in the forest provides some shelter from rain, but the latter half to the summit has no trees at all - rain would be problematic. That day was rough - it was cold enough to hail, and we kept getting pelted. On the way back, to protect our faces from those ice pellets, we had to walk backwards facing away from the wind. The fog was so thick that day - besides the lake below, we couldn’t see where the mountain was at all.