Beautiful day at Hex Mountain—it was snowy and stormy driving through Snoqualmie Pass, but it was sunny and windy over here for most of the day! I almost regretted bringing so many layers, but it is very exposed at the top and the wind gusts were very chilly. Snow was intermittent for most of the hike so we kept putting on and taking off our microspikes, then kept them on from around 4500' to the top. Microspikes were plenty sufficient—we weren't post-holing so didn't feel snowshoes were necessary. It was easy to follow the trail when there were tracks in the snow, but there are some forks to be aware of (some weren't on my map!) so a GPS came in handy when there were no tracks.
On another note: Caltopo shows that there is a trail going down the ridge that is east of Newport Creek. We took this one on the descent and it was great until about halfway down when the trail didn't cross over the creek anywhere near where it said it did, so we continued down the "trail" and cut over the creek at 2600' to meet back with the actual Hex Mtn trail. In hindsight, shouldn't have relied on Caltopo knowing that it's not always accurate and it seemed like that side was used more for snowmobile/mountain biking so I would not recommend taking this route unless you are familiar with it or have a better source of information than we did.
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