Our mid-week trip paid off with an amazing camp spot in the "upper" section of Snowgrass flats at 6300', where we had front porch views of Mt. Adams. There was good water, crossing the trail at around 6200'. On top of it, we had absolutely no bugs (those camped below, in the trees, were complaining about mosquito issues).
We chose to climb Old Snowy via the Old Snowy-Ives Col route described in the book "Selected Climbs in the Cascades". The route is straight forward, if you are comfortable with off trail navigation. If you are coming from Snowgrass Flats, it also probably saves you a 1.5 mile hike to the the trail on the north side of Old Snowy. There is a large carne on the PCT at 6800' and you simply head up to the col from here. The last 300 ish feet to the saddle is on talus, but it was remarkably stable and easy to hike on. There was a short section of snowfield at the top that you needed to cross to get to the summit block. We had ice axes, so brought them out, but agreed that we would have been comfortable using our trekking poles. We then retraced our track back to the saddle, with the thought that we could take the ridge over to Ives Peak and even saw a boot path heading that way. What we found is that the jagged rocks along the ridgeline force you out onto the front/west face due to the shear drop-off on the east side. This forces you to drop down to around 7400' and you need to side-hill on crappy, loose talus for about a mile, before you can head up to the summit block of Ives Peak. NOT FUN!!!! My buddy and I agreed, in retrospect, that if you really want to climb Ives Peak, the best way is probably to go straight up from Snowgrass Flats and don't do it in combination with Old Snowy.
On our next day, we decided to head north on the PCT to check out the knife edge. There is fairly large snowfield on the PCT just before the trail up to Old Snowy. We saw a lot of folks crossing it, so we headed across. We had left our ice axes at the camp and only had our poles. Mid-way across, we both agreed that the track was sloping and very slippery with significant exposure below (i.e.: one slip and you would be hitting 20 mph in no time, heading for the rocks below). On our way back, we decided to just skirt it on the talas slope above, which was easy and didn't really take any more time than crossing the snowfield. We headed up the trail to the knife edge and spent a couple of wonderful hours enjoying the scenery and taking pictures. FYI- while up there, we did watch a few parties have issues/falls crossing the snowfields below, on the PCT, so using the 'Alt PCT' route above is a consideration.
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