>>1058197>I wish it looked like your picture! That would have been easy peasy.I didn't take that picture to specifically show that the trail was covered in snow, so it's not super clear, but the trail headed off to the left in that photo, which was steep and snowy (the route continues up past the shoulder of the hill in the foreground and then for another quarter mile or so). The rocks on the right were steep and loose, though, so what I ended up doing was kicking steps into the snow and I got up and over that section, and then across a larger snow field on top, with some difficulty. The real problem was on the other side of the saddle (no photo of that) where it was much steeper and the switchbacks were totally covered in tall, but isolated, snowdrifts. I was able to get down the hill by dropping in between the frozen snow drift and the side of the hill and bushwacking a new route down the slope on rocks, although it was pretty challenging hiking.
Point is, the only way to know if some snow-covered route is do-able is to try doing it. The hazards aren't THAT serious, since the snow is getting pretty shallow by June/July, as long as you keep in mind the risk of sliding when it gets too steep. People go straight up snowy/icy slopes with crampons and an ice axe, but if the snow field is more limited in extent, you can "fake it" by just going slow and kicking steps with your hiking boots. The whole falling through into a stream risk has been very overblown in this thread. Although melting water does have to go somewhere, and that's typically down, the big streams will all have cut clear banks into snowfields by early summer. If you do punch through the crust, it's not going to be into anything big or dangerous, usually no more than 12 inches down or so into a puddle. Big deal.
