Forest road is in decent shape down to the Cascade River. Cement bridge is fine, and it's possible to drive a little further past the bridge to a pullout where some other folks parked, but a huge washout and stream makes the road undriveable pretty quick.
The old logging road trail segment after the road fork is super brushy and gnarly. Lots of trees down, and lots of underbrush everywhere. The old wooden bridge is basically gone, and now is just a log crossing.
The uphill trail segment on Found Peak is much clearer and easier to navigate lower down, but just below the mordor boulder field area, snow engulfed the whole trail and navigation turned into a zoo. Lot of challenging routefinding up there. Boulders were snowcovered this time, but staying on any kind of path was difficult.
Past Found Peak though, the terrain opens up a lot, and navigation to the Snowking summit is much easier. It's all under snow at this point.
Ridgeline was straightforward, glacier was just a big undulating snowfield, so there were no difficulties.
Made the mistake of going up the summit directly, via the super steep snow slope, and I made it, but white-knuckled it in the softening snow the whole time.
Views from the summit were beyond words, and even these photos hardly do it justice.
Way back down, I came down via the rocks to well below the steep snow sections, and then rejoined the glacier and cruised back easy peasy.
Navigating back to Found Peak was easy, but it got dark on the way back down Found Peak, and I ended up bushwhacking in the dark back to the old logging road segment... And I do not recommend doing that. Next time I come up here I'm bringing a tent and taking it easier, and camping out. It is definitely worth camping here.
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