I hiked this trail with eight of my friends, a group of varying skill levels. The first 2+ miles are just nothing but steep switchbacks, and our group separated in two: some fast hikers hammering it at the front, and then a slower group. I was in the fast hiker group, and we ended up waiting for 20+ minutes just after 2 miles for the rest to catch up. The slow people aren't sedentary, they hike plenty -- it's just that the first two miles are unrelenting.
From there, you pretty soon move into an open ascent through a badly overgrown field. I was in pants and didn't notice a thing, but several friends in shorts reported many nettle stings.
Soon after, you'll come upon the sign showing Lookout Mountain from Monogram Lake. The sign is down--be careful. A few years ago, I missed it and hiked Lookout by mistake. This time, I spotted it easily enough, but it's still good to keep a close eye.
As you take the trail diverging to Monogram, you'll again be faced by an unrelenting ascent, this time including several large blowdowns you'll need to get over. This section was right around a mile.
For us, last weekend, it was just shy of mile 4 that we came upon the main snowfield. We met a hiker headed back in, a solo male with a dog. He told us he hadn't used spikes at all, just poles. He did caution us strongly to use a GPS because it was hard to find the trail.
He was right! The last mile-plus of the trail will see you go up through a snowfield and then down a steep, pitched descent to Monogram Lake. The snow seemed stable except for a few areas near the edges where I saw bridging and then one odd area in the middle of the field where the snow was strangely airy and soft. The views on the ridge as you prepare for the descent to Monogram are stunning--Cascades everywhere. Down at the lake, there was only a little bit that had melted through the ice, but it was warm enough that two of my friends briefly got in.
Our group used microspikes and poles, and we needed them a lot on the way back up from the lake. We may have just followed bootpath and gotten off the trail, but the climb back up the snowy slope was brutal. It was at this part in the hike that I felt blisters erupting right and left, and they haven't subsided several days later.
This is a wonderful trail, a worthy trail. The views are fantastic. But boy, you will work for it. Our slower group didn't actually continue on through the snowfields, and I think they were probably right to stop. Even for us fast hikers, we spent right around 6 hours on the trail, though that will improve a lot once the snowfields melt out.
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