We started the hike around 8:30 AM, which turned out to be a mistake - in retrospect, I wish we had camped the night before and started early. We hit snow almost immediately after the trailhead and switched to skinning. Easily skinned to the edge of the treeline, but by that point the sun had significantly warmed the snow, and it was a total slog trying to skin up slushy snow. This slowed our pace considerably, and eventually we decided to turn around at about 6000ft because continuing to ascend in slush was just too annoying.
We had a fun time skiing down, though it was very slushy the whole way. The best skiing was on the trail in the trees. I assume since it was shaded all day it stayed a little cooler and was better quality. We could ski all the way back to the trailhead, though some parts were very thin. I expect in 1-2 weeks it will be necessary to walk many portions of the trail until getting above the treeline.
We stayed out of avalanche terrain, but there was obvious evidence of some recent avalanches (mostly small). There are some small cornices we saw which haven't failed yet.
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