Mount Pilchuck/East Ridge

Our entire day was spent in the clouds, from parking lot to the summit and back. The snow level is currently at 4100' on the standard route so a good share of the trip is fully on snow. There were only 4 people who were ahead of us, two of which were mountain rescue folks who were replacing signs to help keep hikers from getting off route and requiring future rescues. (These rescue guys were intentionally off-route so were of no help to anyone trying to actually stay on route!) Only two people had summitted ahead of us so the way was unclear much of the time. We encountered a brother-sister team that were more than happy to follow us to the summit as they didn't know where they were going and were truly unprepared for the conditions. We were able to stay on the snow almost all the way to the lookout, and only boulder-hopped about 15' to the northwest side of the lookout, where a ramp is conveniently located. We exited via the ladder and looped back right to regain our up route (which is quite a bit to the north of the summer hiking trail.) NOTE: If any students need to get snow credit on a relatively low gain trip, I recommend leading this one ASAP before the good snow is all gone! 5 miles, 2200' gain.