Winter Scramble - Icicle Ridge (winter)

No snow for the first 1700 ft gain to the start of the ridge. We stayed on the trail which had hard packed snow on and off until around 4000 ft at which point the snow started to be continous. Pretty good hard pack going up with very minimal postwholing for most of us but coming down it got softer and the snowshoes would had been helpful for the first 1500 ft down (we didn't bring them). We only carried microspikes and crampons (and didn't use them).