Our group of three humans and one canine made the climb to West Bandera today, starting from I-90 Exit 42. About 3600' of ascent in 7.3 miles (we took some shortcut trails, so your mileage may vary!).
ROAD / TH: As we parked at Exit 42, there are no issues with the road. The Mason Lake / Ira Spring road is officially closed, though it has no snow on it whatsoever, so it's totally driveable if you are OK ignoring the closure. We saw a few cars parked at the TH as we were coming down.
LOWER MASON CREEK TRAIL: The trail up along the creek is pretty lovely, really. It gets a lot more light since the timber harvest a few years ago, and the tread is generally in good shape. Yes, it's a bit steep and a bit rooty, but it's a pretty pleasant walk along the forest with the sounds of the creek keeping you company. There are probably half a dozen trees down, but they're not too hard to get over. This short bit up to the road gets you nicely warmed up, adding about 500-600' of elevation to the trip vs. starting at Ira Spring.
IRA SPRING TRAIL: In excellent condition. There is no snow until you reach the first avalanche chute. In the trees there is no snow at all until you get up and over the ridge and start dropping to Mason Lake. However, out in the open sections, the trail has been packed down by hikers, causing the snow to be hard and icy, and not melt as fast (see photo #2). You can probably do it without micro-spikes, but I would definitely recommend bringing them with you.
BANDERA MOUNTAIN TRAIL: The trail is its usual steep and scrambly self until you reach the ridge top. The lower section has a fair bit of snow, then hardly any snow at all for the steepest parts, then quite a bit of snow as you get up onto the ridge. We put our spikes on at the Mason / Bandera junction and left them on all the way to the summit. This was annoying in many places, as we were climbing over bare rocks in our spikes, but it was easier than constantly donning and removing the spikes would have been. I think it would be quite difficult to summit now without spikes or crampons.
Note: the bootpack to the summit is not really all that distinct, and it doesn't always follow the summer trail. So, it's pretty easy to get off course if you're not paying attention. I wouldn't recommend this summit right now unless you're comfortable with off-trail navigation on snow, or have been to the top before and have a track (GPS or in your head!) to follow.
BANDERA MOUNTAIN WEST RIDGE: For fun, we thought we'd try coming down the west ridge off the summit rather than down the super-steep section south to the junction. This worked great and was much more pleasant than descending the uber-steep section with the annoying mix of snow and rocks. There is actually a very nice trail in the woods for most of the route. It dumps you out onto the Ira Spring Trail just east of the Ira Spring Trail's high point. The ridge trail is not very distinct in the upper part where it joins the main Bandera trail - perhaps we weren't quite on it, or perhaps it was snow-covered.
SNOW: No avalanche danger whatsoever now. The snow cover is very thin, and generally rock hard, even off-trail. Snowshoes not necessary anywhere, but micro-spikes are highly recommended for the firm snow. The snow cover below the Bandera ridge is less than a foot deep. At the summit it's maybe 2-3' tops, but there are still lots of exposed rocks and dirt in the south-facing areas.
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