A glorious beginning of May hike, but with a decent amount of snow to navigate. We started off early in the morning from the Vincent Gap trailhead, couldn’t go any farther down the road due to it being closed from previous weather. We saw some PCT hikers getting up and ready for their day and we started up the trail. The first little bit up the switchbacks weren’t bad, but the higher you got the more the snow patches increased. We ended up putting on spikes and continuing on. When you get to the main part where it’s a lot of switchbacks, it was completely covered in deep, packed snow. With our micro spikes and poles, we went straight up since you couldn’t find the switchbacks. The degree of the slope at some points was crazy and we saw some people with ski’s. Once we reached the ridge, the snow was back to patches, until you got to that last climb to the summit. We had taken our spikes off by then, but it was manageable to hike that last little push in the snow. We reached the summit, took pictures and then I slipped on a patch of snowy ice near the Boy Scout monument…..only my ego was hurt. We sat down for brunch, which was sandwiches and 2 PCT hikers made it up. We hung out with them for a little, shared some food and then made our way back down. We ran into more PCT hikers on our decent, and glissaded down part of the hill. It was a great day on trail and since we got an early start, we were off early as well.