Arrived around 10:30 on a Saturday and parking lot was pretty full.
Intermittent snow right from the start, with much of it packed into ice and pretty slippery. On the route from the start up to the balcony it would switch back and forth between snow and mud/rocks and we didn't end up putting on spikes till shortly before the balcony.
After the balcony it was consistently snow-covered the rest of the way to the top, just getting deeper and less packed as we went up. The snow itself was very wet and dense but also slippery - it was almost like walking on sand at times and even with spikes we were slipping around quite a bit. Some postholing too. We didn't have snowshoes and we saw a handful of other people carrying them, but only one person actually wearing them.
We got to the top around 2pm and then started back down. The descent was a bit tricky because of the slippery snow, especially on the steeper sections near the peak. We took spikes off a little after the balcony and then ended up putting them back on to deal with the packed icy snow down there.
Comments