Hi Sunshine,
Like 2600fromatari, the chute did not scare me going up. It is steep but if you have crampons and an ice axe you can stop yourself quite well.
I was much more scared of glissading too fast on the chute when headed down on the way back. The snow was way soft and crampons seemed almost more dangerous than glissading on the descent in the afternoon. I gingerly picked my way over to a route on the south side that did not end on the rocks at the bottom. Glissading slowly made the most sense to me since I don't have a lot of upper body strength and wasn't sure I could break myself effectively at higher speeds. So, I went slowly down the chute, ice axe planted and ready to lever up as a break. There were a couple of times I felt like I was going too fast and the axe wouldn't catch when I levered up (the snow was that soft). I discovered I could create a wedge of snow that would stop me by separating my feet and digging in my heels. I know you can also flip over onto your belly to self-arrest, covering the handle of the ice axe and digging in your toes, but this didn't seem practical to me in the conditions we had. Maybe that would work better in harder snow. In any case, I got down the chute okay, slowly, mostly in good control, but not without fear and cursing. Seriously, it was not as bad as it looked but I would not recommend trying to enjoy the glissade opportunity until the rocks at the bottom of the descent are out of your path. After that, it was fun.
The sketchy parts of the trail on the backside would probably be scary even in dry conditions, but were worse when we hiked them on Saturday. If the conditions do not change (and they should improve at least a little) you may face three or four short sections where the trail consists of boot tracks (one place to put each foot) only inches from an edge that drops off into the abyss (anything from thirty to maybe hundreds of feet). Where the trail is this skimpy, there appear to be places on the mountain side to plant an ice axe, but I was dismayed to discover that one cannot plant anything deep enough to hold a person onto the trail if they were to slip. If conditions had been very windy, or if anyone had been woozy, we would have stopped and not tried to cross these sections. In drier weather, the trail would probably be much wider; the drop-offs would still be there, but there would be a much bigger margin for misstep. As it was, I made it through but not before thinking long and hard about whether these sections were risks I really wanted to take. Getting back did seem easier, I guess because there was no choice.
Hope that helps. I hope this doesn't scare anyone too much but on the other hand, I think there is a tendency to gloss over the risks. There are some serious risks involved in this effort. Happily, most are very manageable. Go slow, think carefully, be safe!
