Report from hike on Sunday 6/12. Weather was less than ideal- we hit the trail at 2:30 with quite a bit of rain and lightning in the area. Fortunately the rain stopped as we hit Muir Lake, and the sun broke shortly thereafter. By the time we hit trail camp, we had clear skies and a window to reach the summit. As expected the switchbacks were inaccessible due to high snow levels, so we put on our crampons and went up the chute (mostly using hiking poles but using ice axe as well). Four of us made it to the top of the chute at ~9:30- 3 of us continued to reach the summit shortly before noon. We could see a storm quickly moving in as we reached the summit, and as we began our descent we had heavy snow fall. We then glissaded down the chute (only option due to snow levels). Getting down took a while due to heavy snow (difficult to locate the trail at bottom of chute due to lot of snow), but we made it back safely late afternoon.
Anyone hiking in the next few weeks- there will be a lot of snow, be prepared to go up the chute.
Question- when we reached the bottom there were two solo hikers that had not made it down, their friends had gone to the ranger station to report it. Does anyone know if they made it down alright?
