Group of 4 started the road walk to Halfmoon TH around 1 pm on Sunday (5/25). There were several small patches of snow on Notch Mountain road starting ~0.5 miles past Tigiwon Community House until the TH. We arrived at the TH ~4 pm. Fairly easy to circumvent snowdrifts and select thinly covered sections of trail for the first 3/4 of a mile. Around 10900', snow was too ubiquitous and soft so we all switched to snowshoes. Somewhere between 11200' and 11400' post-holing in our snowshoes became pretty common until we got to the top of Halfmoon pass (~5:45 pm). For the next 3/4 of a mile there was still plenty of post-holing in snowshoes as we traversed the northside of Notch mountain.
It was pretty warm the prior week, so there were only occasional and vague suggestions of ski and/or boot tracks and as a result we overshot some wiggles in the trail and had to route find through the trees until we rejoined the trail around the 2.25 mile mark (from the TH). The rest of the way down Notch mountain was relatively easy and dry so we all stashed our snowshoes; the trail was dry with snowdrifts piling up at the elbows of switchbacks and one or two soft heaps of snow obstructing the straightaway of switchbacks. I think we crossed East Cross Creek (~10700') around 8 pm. Campsite 3 (a sharp right turn immediately after the creek crossing) was covered in uneven snow so we opted for Campsite 4. Site 4 was clear of snow, but it was a little muddy.
We all woke up at 3:30 am, set out a little after 4 am. We crossed the stream that drains the pond west of East Cross Creek and that was basically the end of things. We started post-holing (we couldn't be higher than 10800' at that point) as we arrived at the steep ascent out of the valley. We didn't like the route out of the valley and spent time looking for an alternative but eventually turned around due to concerns about possible injuries and time constraints. We made our way back to camp to repack our bags and make the trip out between 6 and 6:30 am. Conditions during the climb out of the valley and back to Halfmoon pass were great. All the snow we post-holed the prior day was nicely crusted and held our weight. As you might expect, the Eastside of the pass was a bit mushy in parts even below treeline, but very manageable even without snowshoes. We took lots of breaks on the way out and started down the road around 10:30 am
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