Started at Paradise at 8:15am. From the Paradise parking lot until around 8000ft, 5 of us hiked in drizzle & clouds where you could only see about 150ft in front of you. We relentlessly followed the 'NPS' flags through the snow. We found a GPS especially helpful this day considering the low visibility.
There was exposed trail around the Pebble Creek area. We stopped her for our 1st break. Then up again on the snow. There were lots of boot paths, but we followed the ones closest to the flags. Once we reached the 8000 ft mark, the sun broke through and it was clear and sunny. If you turning around 180 degrees, you could see the MT Adams peak pushing through the blanket of clouds. It looked as if you could walk on this blanket right over to it. Breath taking!
It was all sun from here to Camp Muir. Strangely there was no wind/breeze to talk about.
There were few people on the trail early morning. We saw about a dozen or two, but coming down around 2pm we ran into many more hikers.
The warmish temps make the hike down rather slushy, but do-able in mountain boots. Maybe using snow shoes would have increased stability. We were able to glissade about a dozen times on the way down.
After passing Pebble Creek on the way down, we took a wrong turn (left) following some boot paths. Make sure to keep an eye on the flags on the way down as well. We ran into another group of hikers that did the same and we both turned around (relying on our GPSs) to get us back to the main (snow) trail where we spotted a flag.
Overall a good hike. I found having people that are good route finders to
be essential when doing this hike.
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