I appreciated all the previous updates from others in my planning. My daughter, son and I went up yesterday. The weather was great, but the warmer temperature had the chute softening up earlier. Hearing reports from the day before and worried about slushy conditions, we moved out portal start time up from 3:00 to 2:00 am. That got us to Trail Camp by 8:00 after a detour and a break to filter water for all of us

We were topping out the chute around 9:00 am and it was already getting pretty soft by then. I’m glad we were not much later. A few made it up with microspikes, but I was glad we had crampons and axes. Earlier is better. We didn’t see or hear of anyone using the switchbacks, except for one group that used the lower portion and then cut over to the chute.

The trail from Trail Crest to the summit is mostly clear, but there are still a few tricky places with some slippery snow. They were too short to bother putting on any kind of spikes, but they required a little bit of attention. There were also some longer snow covered areas that were not much of an issue. That segment was slower than expected for us, and we didn’t get to the summit until around noon.

Conditions were great for glissading mid-afternoon, but by the time we were going down most people had used one track that was dug down at least a couple of feet from the surface and down to visible rocks in a couple of places. I opted for another path and speed control was very manageable.

A few other miscellaneous notes as a first-timer:
—water level seemed fairly high at a few of the stream crossings. In a few places it would very difficult to keep socks dry if you don’t have water-proof boots, and it is still to cold to hike with wet feet.
—the segment from the Muir Trail intersection to the summit is the longest 1.9 miles ever. We again proved altitude is tricky; it affected my very fit 21 year-old son more than his older sister or me.
—it is stunningly beautiful. The magnitude of the grandeur of everything from the canyon rock walls to the vistas in every direction from the top are on a different scale than other beautiful places I have been.