Goat Flats, Three Fingers

We decided to do an overnight conditioning hike in to Goat Flats. Road is open to the trail head and we did not encounter any snow until about a mile from saddle lake. There is a new difficulty though in the first 1 and half miles and that is downed trees. I counted 30 fallen trees across the trail in the first mile and a half, many are climb up and roll over 4-5 in diameter. About 23 on them need a chainsaw to deal with them.
From saddle lake it is snow it is a snow covered trail the rest of the way up. Very few patches o dirt the rest of the way. At the pond area above saddle lake there is still 8 feet of snow in that drainage basin.
The trail that somebody put in the snow varies a little from the usual trail but it is effective in keeping out of the streams. There is a problem at about 4 miles in. Instead of rising up to the top of the ridge and following the ridge line into goatflats they went went down into the valley below goatflats and then decided to go up vertically to goatflats, about a 800 foot vertical scramble in a 20 foot wide shaft at 70 drgrees. At was a crampons and ice axe climb to get to goatflats because we were unwilling to backtrack.
On the way out the next morning we put in tracks the way the trail usually goes down.
There about 6 feet of snow in goat flats area and some very large cornices drifting to the north along the trail route up the hill.
We hiked up in the clouds with poor visibility but just before sunset the clouds dropped and we had a stellar sunset, bright orange glow on the surrounding peaks.