Minor snow patches from winter closure to beginning of Brainard Lake. Road fully snow covered before the bend to Lost Lake Trailhead. We hiked the road and it was over before it started. We were able to hike on snow with no issues all the way to Lake Isabelle. Started skinning at the end of the lake in good conditions before switching over to bootpacking, we wore crampons too, but not really necessary, but since we had em, hey why not.
We had somewhat of a booter for follow to about 1/2 up queens way where either the previous party turned around or the steps were filled in, the conditions were variable, new snow not fully consolidated, but manageable. The upper face was even more variable, some real firm, almost ice underneath the recent snow on the solar aspects.
The snow refroze with the clouds that came in so the turns on the upper face were survival skiing, but we got good spring pow on the right hand side of the couloir. My GPS had us cover 16 miles in 11 hours with 3,600 vert.
     
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