Hiked the main trail route this weekend.

Main trail is actually nowhere to be found right before outpost camp. There were plenty of tracks through the snow, indicating very clear routes to hike up/down through the snow. Some of those sections were pretty steep, so to save energy, one would either criss-cross, or take a longer but more moderate way to reach the same goal.

We started our hike at noon, and arrived at Trail Camp at 8:40. We managed to do it with daylight, but within the next 15 minutes or so, it was dark. We setup our tent, like everybody else we could see, in a rock ledge.

After we ate, I took the decision of aborting the summit attempt we were supposed to do the following morning. I aborted it because we would need to spend quite some time melting more snow to have enough water for the summit attempt and the hike back to our tent. And then, we would have to melt more snow for the hike back to the car. This would have required a lot of our time, which would have made us ready to go to bed around midnight, leaving us with little time to really rest for an early morning summit attempt.

There was a second reason for my decision, which I totally understand if anyone (or everyone) in this forum sees it as the first, not the second reason, and it was simply due to the fact that I had decided not to take ice axes with us. My decision was based in stuff I had read here, but I take as a lesson learnt, that unless I read a report from within the last two days, I should ALWAYS plan for the worst.
In this case, it still looked as something that could be done (hiking the chute without ice axes), but I kept thinking that it would have been a risk, regardless of how it looked to me at the moment, and it was (thankfully) clear to me that it was unnecessary to put ourselves in that risky situation.
It was very interesting to me to see a lot of people (no less than a dozen) start their summit attempts as late as 11:30 am the next day!

Weather will improve, that is a fact, but in the foreseeable future (at least the next week), there will be a lot of snow starting very close to 9500 ft. The first little creek crossing is not an easy one. The second crossing, the one with the logs, is also not as easy as it used to be, due to a log in one of the sections being broken, so you have to jump from one to the other, an sketchy proposition.

My recommendations for anyone using this route within the next (roughly) seven days:
1. Start your hike early. No later than 10 AM.
2. Bring Ice Axe.
3. Crampons, no Micro-spikes.
4. An extra pipe of fuel for snow melting.
5. Pay the weight cost to bring protection for VERY cold nights.

Lastly, I think that, ideally, you would get to Trail Camp, sleep, summit the next day, back to TC, stay one more night, and the third day, hike back to your car.
Hope this info helps someone.

Mauricio