Alpine Scramble - Guye Peak/North Route

The PCT/Commonwealth parking area remains under snow and inaccessible.  The plowed-out "parking" area across the road from the usual entry for the parking area is signed for No Parking/Tow Zone, so after meeting, dropping packs and snowshoes at that location, we moved the cars to the south side of the underpass for safer parking.


The snow continues to be far from ideally consolidated: we wore snowshoes for the entire trip, pavement to pavement.  No reasonable, safe opportunity to practice in-balance ice ax travel, glissading, etc., but the students gained considerable confidence and experience with snowshoes on steep terrain.
The creek crossing on the mesh-wrapped log is challenging, so the bulk of the group went further north above the east bank of the creek to a solid snow bridge.
Weather was decent up above the Pass (and beautifully sunny in Seattle on our return): may things continue in this direction and may the freaking snow begin to CONSOLIDATE already!

Started just before eight am from the pavement of the Alpental access road and returned to the pavement at just after two pm for a six hour round trip put up by this very well-conditioned and well-motivated group of students!  Including about 40 minutes on the summit.