Seriously awesome report, Anusha! Congrats! We had to have passed each other on the backside when you were going down and us up. You really captured the day well, both in pictures and descriptions.
We talked to some folks yesterday at our hotel (so second hand) that said Elevation only rents crampons and not ice axes. The people at Elevation were super helpful though so may want to call them to double check. Maybe REI?
We used flexible, light hiking boots (scarpa moraine and vasque Talus) that work fine with both universal crampons (Grivel air tech light) and microspikes.
Again, if you are experienced with an axe (and you should be) then I think microspikes are sufficient and are more suited to the backside where there is a mix of snow, dirt and rock. Crampons would of course be more solid in the chute, but given the boot pack we never put them on and just continued in microspikes.
We put spikes on at trail camp and left them on until we were back at trail camp again (after miles and miles in microspikes over rock and dirt we have not noticed undue wear in the spikes/chains. The rubber part will wear out first so we just tend to leave them on).
Keep in mind that conditions could be a bit different when you go depending on temperatures.
