Stats: 11 miles (avg. from our 3 GPS tracks), 7.5 hours, ~5000 ft gain
I will say first, this hike is difficult. I have not read the other reports, but definitely do a slightly shorter, similar grade hike (think Mt. Si) before you tackle this one, or really take your time. Wish we all had more energy to try to get to the true summit.
The difficult stream crossings are the snow bridges across a small creek before sourdough as well as Sourdough Creek; they were still solid but weakening so be careful the next couple weeks. I imagine they'll be melted out before end of July.
Only other snow to worry about is at the ridge before the final ascent to the lookout. When this gets patchy it may actually be worse, but we faired ok with just poles/ice axes for safety as the entire ridge was still covered in deep snow. We all had our spikes just in case of course. We kept to the less steep parts and trudged our way to the lookout. Most folks would probably be fine with one or the other as we did but if you're concerned, have both foot traction and poles/axe for when the snow gets soft in the afternoon sun. I'm sure it was worse later in the day.
I typically hike faster down either way, but for those with knees that are not fond of steep downhills, remember it's as steep down as when you came up, so you might not be a much faster descent for large sections of trail.
I think our climb took about 4 hours, descent about 3 hours. Remaining time we spent resting at the lookout eating lunch, or on short breaks on the way up. Hope you get as beautiful a day to climb this monster, the views are so spectacular I almost wrote some poems. Alas, I had forgotten my notebook :-)
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