Yesterday, I climbed the Mountaineer’s Route and then descended the main trail (with a detour to Mt. Muir). As Doug said, the lower gate was open, but the next gate up (about a 40-minute walk from the trailhead) was locked. The road was completely clear. The parking lot next to the trailhead still had three feet of snow in the morning, but they cleared it by the time I hiked out. I didn’t go by the pond, but the road was clear as far as I could see. My guess is that they will open all the gates on Friday, as Doug said.
There is a lot of snow everywhere, once you get a few hundred feet above the portal. There is avalanche debris on the north fork (Mountaineers’ Route) in the canyon below Lower Boy Scout Lake. You don’t want to be there in the middle of the day. I don’t think anybody has been on the ledges yet. It appeared that you could take them if you wanted to, but you would be forced onto easy snow up higher. There is great snow coverage all the way to about 100’ below the notch. The final 400 is mixed snow and rock.
You can follow the main trail up to about 9,300’. After that, the tracks take some shortcuts, but more or less follow the trail. The chute has lots of snow. It will be the best way up and down for quite a while. The trail on the back side is mostly snow, but there are plenty of bare patches. There are several short, steep places that are hard to cross without crampons.
Overall, the snow is soft, which makes for a lot of extra work. Fortunately, I rarely punched into the snow deeper than my ankles. Leave the snowshoes at home. I hope this helps. Have fun!
