Today, with the bad weather predicted later in the day, but high winds all day, I ended up hiking Mt. Colden as a loop from ADK Loj in order to finish up what I didn't do the previous weekend, and to finally go up the trail between Lake Colden and the peak.
Starting in the dark once again, I quickly found my way down the VanHovenberg trail to Marcy Dam and then the Avalanche Pass trail out to Avalanche Lake. The trails were typical, and surprisingly minimal mud even though there had been on and off rain over night. The trail work through Avalanche Pass is holding up nicely with the wet weather and my boots were relatively clean when I got to Lake Colden. Based on my hike the week before I decided to go around the lake and approach the Colden trail from the south. I erred in my memory. The one sketchy "ladder" that I was wanting to avoid is literally right before the trail. That said, the trail from the north was muddy a week ago, so it was probably still a better choice to go from the south.
Then I started the climb up Colden. I knew going in this was going to be one steep climb with multiple places that have "ladders". I was prepared for that. What I didn't expect was how much slab walk there was. The initial climb for the first half mile or so is just typical steep trail. Once you go up the first, long, set of stairs, the slab walk starts. I personally don't mind most slab walks as our rock is nice and grippy and it's just a calf burn to go up. That is walking straight up the fall line of the slab. This trail is not that. It's a walk across the fall line which puts your ankles in weird positions for about a mile. I don't think that I could ever recommend coming down this trail though.
The hike down was what I expected. A fair amount of mud as you got down to Lake Arnold, and a mud pit when you are down at the lake. The top half mile to the cutoff trail is the typical wet, and the rest of the way down was the typical rocky trail. Once back down to Avalanche Camp, ran into a crew doing trail work, and I cannot thank them and all the others that put in the work to maintain and improve our trails. Then it was out through Marcy Dam again, and the well tread trail back to the Loj parking lot.
Overall, a great day out in the woods, and I got to the car just in time for the rain to start.