You can drive all the way up to the portal no problem (obviously go around the at road closed sign:)) definitely crampons and ice axe as you already know. I brought snow shoes just incase but we started so early everything was pretty hard packed. I did post hole a few times on the way back but not enough to put the snow shoes on because everything was getting hard/icy again. It's true you can by pass the e ledges but it's a lot of bush wacking on that side so we decided to just do them and stay on trail. No avy danger right now everything looked good and consolidated. Perfect conditions. I would recommend roping up going down the final 400. We went up the class 3 route up (not the class 2 traverse, although it might have been the better option). Very slippery even with crampons. There is mostly snow on that part...not sure if it's usually a ton of rocks in the summer but it's covered in steep snow (steeper than the chute) We used our ice axes as anchors on the way down the final 400. On the way down the chute it got pretty icy and windy but that's normal when the sun stops hitting it...derr. It was every type of snow...
