Backpacked in to Outpost camp on the fourth. Summitted on July 5 and returned to the Portal.
Taking the old trail at the start (thanks to Tdtz’s post on 6/26/11) was excellent and avoided the roaring North Fork of Lone Pine Creek—this trail is easily accessed at the highest point of the road.
The only place where you can’t avoid water are at the meadows below Outpost camp —it was ankle deep and about 30-40 feet of cold water—you could go bare foot if you wish to save the weight. The creek crossing just below Outpost Camp was crossable with either a minor wade or just barely on rocks and a log, the crossing just above Outpost camp had about 1 inch of water over one of the rocks.
The snow field starts about at 11200 feet, after you have climbed up the rocky ridge south of Mirror Lake and traversed west about a quarter of a mile into the Lone Pine Creek valley, which is now completely filled with snow. At this point, we put on our Hillsound trail crampons/microspikes and there were two paths: we stayed on the original trail itself which followed the right side of the snow field before ascending into the rocks to the north side; eventually there was a 50 yard snowy traverse, before traveling up to Trail Camp. The other well-beaten path in the snow stays on the south side of the valley and travels up the gulley of Consultation Lakes outflow creek before leading on to Trail Camp. The latter trail was much easier to come down on as you could slide on the snow, but spikes/crampons would really be needed to realistically climb it.
The chute was impressive link: https://www.amazon.com/photos/share/eIvct3gIhGEhA8nQhHBWk0J9z99crR2OlzhLvxcj915 we ended up heading over onto the rocks along the south side of it, which we then climbed. At the top of these rocks, we had about 120 yards of snow to ascend and traverse over to Trail Crest, which we reached around 9am. The snow conditions were reasonable with only mild slush at this time. Multiple people just headed slowly up the chute, but crampons really are much more effective for snow climbing vs microspikes. There is also a skinny island of rocks that travels up the middle of the chute which some people were also climbing, leaving them with a final 50 yards of fairly steep snow to ascend to get to Trail Crest For safety, ice axes should be used, despite other posts.
From Trail Crest to the summit is draining but uneventful, until the intermittent snow/hail began on the summit around 1PM. By the time that we returned to Trail Crest and decided to take the switchbacks down, the snow/hail was intermittently heavy. There is a 75 yard steep snow field to cross with a trodden path to negotiate just south of Trail Crest—not difficult but slipping would send you speedily down a thousand feet of the chute unless you can arrest yourself [img:left]https://www.amazon.com/photos/share/hV5f4Tt7aw9QbT6aIPubl2Mfp0L0zpCKR1eYx0AAt7Q[/img].
The upper switchbacks themselves are mostly clear of snow, except for the more northern ends of the higher switchbacks and one more 80 foot snow field traverse midway down to the cables at about 13200 ft of altitude. Snow reaches all the way up to the cables; to actually access this “end” of the switchbacks, you have to do a 12 foot scramble up one of posts and rocks avoiding a small waterfall coming down this area (when we were there at 4pm). From this point you can glissade down, traverse over, then glissade down almost to Trail Camp. With a bit of scrambling in dirt/mud/rocks, one could probably avoid the snow on the switchbacks above the cables, but this requires cutting the trail, which is not an ideal way of preserving the area for others to enjoy.
Lightning, thunder, and intermittent snow/hail continued until we had returned nearly to Outpost camp (taking the southern snow trail out of Trail Camp). Packing up our somewhat soggy equipment, we hiked back to the Portal to conclude our hike.
So, in summary, you do need some sort of microspike/trail crampon/crampon (unless one has an amazing way of walking up slippery snow slopes; crampons would be the best) and be comfortable climbing up fairly steep snow and glissading down with the ability to slow oneself, an ice axe for safety, and expect to wade before Outpost camp.
