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sgladbach wrote:IMO, with the road closed and if you are not looking for a ski descent, the Fish Hatchery route would be my recommendation as easiest to find and follow.

I did it as a ski descent and thought it was a great option. If you pick your line well and avalanche conditions are good (right now they are not), you can ski pretty continuously from the summit to the trailhead. It was one of the few 14ers I've done where the snow was good enough to enjoy.

I Man, I think it might have been such a tough day because of the huge group size. It's hard to keep 10 people moving at a decent pace. Jim and I didn't start until 9am, finished before dark, and probably could have pushed the pace even quicker had we wanted to.

This is all of course influenced by my biases and may not be appropriate for beginners.

Bean wrote:I did it as a ski descent and thought it was a great option.

I don't do ski descents, so I should not have spoken so definitively. I know that my ski friends/aquaintences have all waited until the west couloirs were in shape. They skied in the Halfmoon Rd. to the N Halfmoon Ck. TH and climbed / skied the mountain on its west side.

Bean has first hand ski info on the east side, so it sounds like the fish hatchery route also makes for a good ski descent.

SurfNTurf, I sent you a PM.

Thanks again to everyone who replied. You were all a great help. I think before I attempt Massive, at least in the winter, I'm going to attempt Quandary and re-attempt Yale and La Plata Peak. That's a good amount of work I'm comfortable with and interested in doing.

Andy