Wow. And without acclimating too. Are your friends joining you to re-enact the hike? If not then document it so they can see what they missed!
I understand your surprise at the May snow thing in western mountains as Eastern mountains are pretty free of snow by May. My first experience with that was when I did a trip to Mt Lassen in mid May where they had just cut the road open to the park through 10 foot snow banks. The trails were covered in snow and soaked our boots (no goretex then, which we use now) but it was spectacular nonetheless to reach the maw of that volcano.
