The road was impassable and completely snow covered beyond the second parking lot up Blue Lakes Rd, so the approach was about 1.8 miles. The entire route was well filled in with snow, with about 6-8 inches of partially consolidated snow sitting on top of a thick freeze/thaw crust. A few hard spots of snice, but not many. I did not use any flotation, just boots and crampons (and axe). A skier released a small sluff avalanche down the central gully that did no harm, but caused the parties below to reconsider. Sticking to the couloir's climbers left seemed to mitigate that risk. Scattered, light snow showers occurred throughout morning, which kept things from heating up and getting sticky until the afternoon, but later on during the descent via East Ridge things were getting really wet. It sounds like a lot of new snow came in over the rest of the weekend, so conditions could be quite different now.
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