I was in the group with jcarney and also appreciate the posts that help provide info to others.

Refer to this thread about the 'Old Trail' so you can avoid the 2 creek crossing in the beginning on the 'Main Trail'. Download those photos to your phone and/or scout it out ahead of time. Here's what the North Fork of Lone Pine Creek looked like when we came down...would not have wanted to crossed that at 2am.

I like maps, so here are a few images:

Old Trail


Listen to jcarney,
Quote:
keep water shoes on until you are sure you are climbing up towards Mirror lake area.
and yes, the mosquitos are big and biting in the early morning. Also, who steals stashed shoes??? not cool.

below Trail Camp


I really enjoyed the alternate route below Trail Camp using microspikes during ascent. It saves time/your knees too on the descent.

View up to Trail Camp


It was my first time using an ice axe, once I got the feel and into a rhythm -
it moved along...ascending 'The chute' was hard. The alternate route for us along this stretch looked somewhat like this next image.

above Trail Camp, ascent/glissade


up The chute


'The backside' was pretty normal for me this time except the very end. I had not taken this route before, but I think there are a few ways up. I captured most of our route with my phone on the way down, seen below.

alternate path near summit


This was my 4th and favorite summit, probably because of the challenge of the chute and (my first time) glissading. Talk to someone about glissading, researching YouTube was not sufficient for me. Dang, that was nice to avoid the 99-switchback abuse on the knees going down!