[phiberoptiK]

Went up to North lake yesterday. The road up to the trail head was clear of snow and the trail only had a little bit of easily passable patchy snow until the first waterfall past independance lake. Past the water fall it is all snow for the rest of the way up to the ridges and tarns then all the way down from the ridge to north lake. The lake is still frozen but thawing quickly. Snow shoes are not needed as the snow is well consolidated and the only post holing that we did was when we passed to close to treewells or crossed a creek on a bad snow bridge. You can easily walk on top of the snow and only sink in as deep as your boots sole. I wish I brought a pair of skis for the descent to north lake, the snow in the glacier/snowfield thing that goes from the ridge all the way to the lake was perfect corn snow and would have cut prolly 25 minutes off the hike. All in all it was a nice day with sun in the morning and clouds/sun in the afternoon and good hiking snow. There is a lot less snow than I figured there would be