We were a team of two. We hiked into Capitol Lake area and set-up camp at Site 7 on July 13th. Upper camps (including ours) filled up by the end of the day, but it was not "crowded". Others reported problems with marmots. We kept everything in the tent or hung items from a tree, and as such, had no marmot problems. We woke up around 4:00 a.m. on the 14th and hit the trail to the saddle by about 5:00 a.m. After the saddle, there were multiple snow crossings where spikes and an ice ax would have been used (had we brought them). On approach to the summit, we abandoned the loose talus along the standard route and scaled steep stable granite to the ridgeline where we traversed to the summit. We crossed paths with only two other teams of two (each) above the lake. We were the first to top out that day, and had the summit (in fact, most of the route) to ourselves. We retraced our steps back to the camp. On our way down through the snow crossings, we punched several post holes near rocks warmed by the sun. We returned to camp, packed out and started our descent to the trail head. We encountered a small brown-colored black bear sow with her cub along the trail on our way down. We made a lot of racket, but they would not clear out. The sow was between us and her cub. We passed without incident. The weather was mostly warm and clear, with some scattered clouds (single layer day). Mosquitos and biting flies were a bother between the trail head and lake.
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