Going to post this in the North Fork (Mountaineer's Route) thread as well.
Easy terrain with occasional powedery snow until the Ebersbacher ledges. The ledges had powdery snow on them so more caution needed especially one step up to another ledge that was very sketchy.
After the ledges it was the normal trail to Lower Boy Scout Lake with intermittent snow. The route to the slabs was powdery snow over boulders and scree. From the normal entrance to the slabs was solid, thick ice all the way across. Avoid
The route from Upper Boy Scout Lake to Iceberg Lake was mostly dry with some areas of more powdery snow. The waterfall coming off Iceberg Lake was solid ice.
Iceberg Lake was frozen but the camping area around the lake was mostly dry. The main chute was about 50/50 dry/snow with only a few tracks. Since all of the snow so far had been powdery where crampons and axe would be useless, we headed up the far left side chute past the towers to the "catwalk". This section had more of the powdery snow. Once the catwalk met up with the main chute it was a mix of mostly loose talus/scree and some sections of the not-so-great snow.
The notch was completely dry and looking up the final 400 from there everything also looked dry. The lower middle section of the final 400 was completely dry, no snow or ice. The left side blocks that lead to the headwall had snow starting from about half way up the final 400 with some ice just at the last section where you climb the headwall making that route not so great. The boulder route on the right side was dry though and passable. The "staircase route" was in sunshine and looked dry.
The summit was very dry with snow patches here and there. Warm sun with a chilly breeze. We decided to take the main trail down to avoid the extensive ice and bad snow conditions in the chute and north fork. The trail between the summit and Trail Crest had plenty of snow but in much better condition than the north fork. From Trail Crest virtually to the Portal was all snow but with a nice boot track. The snow was many times better on the main trail than the north fork. The switchbacks were 95% snow-covered but with a good boot track. The chute next to the switchbacks was maybe 50-75% covered but way too many exposed rocks so we took the switchbacks as were other climbers.
The amount of snow on the main trail was exceptional and in pretty good shape. Kind of surprising the north fork had such lousy snow. All of this is likely going to change dramatically as storm systems move in soon. Well hopefully soon anyway.
Photos:
https://flic.kr/s/aHsmTLgLnX
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