My party of 3 started up from the Big Creek Campground due to snow and ice on the road to the Lower and Upper Trailheads. No problem at all hiking up to the junction with Lower Trailhead and snow first started appearing at 3250' elevation. At 3500' elevation, we switched to microspikes due to consolidated ice and snow on trail.
Having spikes and poles made the ascent fairly straightforward and a good boot track is already established. You do need to switch from the summer route to the winter route ( no tracks on the summer route). Once on the winter route, there is plenty of very deep snow, lots of postholes, unstable snow in places, water running under the snow, and tree wells. As an experienced group, we navigated around all this. The chute is not well set up yet. We were able to get up but there are quite a number of places where the snow bridges are unstable, tree wells exist, serious postholing by an earlier party was present, and much attention is needed in choosing your way up. I wouldn't recommending going up the chute without experience as there is an unstable path up and what is there is often sheer ice. You can kick step your way up but there is evidence of people taking what looks like unplanned slips down.
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