There are a bunch of Mt. Lindsey trail reports, but none of the ones I looked at prior to doing this hike have good "to scale" photos of the hard part - the crux wall. So here you go, a trip report that includes some photos of the crux wall with actual, living human beings in it, so you can see what you're really up against.

GPX is included at the bottom.

For starters though, lets talk about the trailhead. If you put "Lily Lake Trailhead" into Google it will get you in the right direction, but tell you you're done about a mile or two short of the actual trailhead. As far as the conditions go - they are pretty simple. I rode this in a slightly lifted Land Cruiser w/ 33s, which could do that terrain all day long. I had friends that joined and did this in a completely stock, new Honda CRV. Not an older, 90s, light, nimble CRV - I'm talking the family hauling, minivan-esque CRV that exists today. While they had to go a bit slower, they made it up just fine as well.

Since the point of this report is to highlight the crux wall, I'll breeze through the other bits. The trail to Mt. Lindsey is essentially flat for the first mile and a half, before going up the slope of a mountain and eventually entering a large, above-treeline meadow.

After crossing the high alpine meadow, a rib will take you up to the ridgeline and saddle between Lindsey and Iron Nipple.

Once on the ridgeline, contine for a few hundred feet, then (assuming you're doing the ridgeline route and not the gully), cut up to the right to stay on the ridgeline or just left of it.

You can stay on the ridgeline proper and do a sort of sketchy traverse to get to the crux wall (sorry I don't have a picture of this), or go down just left of the ridgeline proper and go up a gully that runs into the crux wall (not the "gully route" mind you).

Okay, so now for the crux wall, the raison d'etre of this trail report. For comparison's sake, I'll put the photo that I have with people in it next to the matching photos from the main site (which has lines, but not people).

The main site suggests 3 routes. A far left Class 3 route, a left Class 4 (fissure) route, and a right Class 4 (ridge) route. I did the "ridge" Class 4 route going up and the "fissure" Class 4 route going down. As such, I don't have much to say about the far left Class 3 route. Regarding the two Class 4 routes - the "ridge" route is definitely harder than the "fissure" route. The "ridge" route has far more exposure, the holds are smaller, and the rock is otherwise sloping downward. I definitely would not take this route going down. It begins simple enough, but get more serious in the slightly darker color rock that is shown in both photos. To compare, the holds are larger on the "fissure" route, it isn't as exposed, and it feels more like a staircase.

Hope these pictures helped! Be safe and enjoy!

UPDATE!: A lot of people were asking about simply continuing up the "fissure" (as opposed to crossing over it and going up the "steps" shown by the orange line in the main site photo) so I included another photo taken below the fissure looking up. My head (guy in orange jacket) is just to the left of the cross-over, at the beginning of the "steps" up the wall, with the guy in the blue jacket at the top of the "steps." You can see that the fissure becomes more recessed after the cross-over, so going up it would require quite a squeeze.