Ellen,
Spent the night in Tamarack Valley last night. Got off the tram at 1:30ish Thursday afternoon, checked in with the rangers and headed out right away. First ten minutes was pure hell of postholing, switched to snow shoes from then on. You can actually follow the "Highway" of tracks all the way to Round Valley fairly easy. We cut across the open meadow and made camp on the other side of the "Pit Toliet" in Tamarack - about 150 yards the other side of it.
Made camp as fast as we could - knowing it was supposed to rain. Got the tents up, made some food, boiled some snow for the summit approach for Friday morning and it only slightly drisseled up to 6:30PM. Just after eating our dinner it started coming down in sperts, on again, off again.
We pretty much stayed in our tents all night long from then on as it was raining fairly regularly thoughout the night. The wind came and went at different times of the night - I checked the temperatures (Hung my thermomator just outside the tent) at different times in the night it never got below 34 degrees.
Up at 5:30 and slogged on snow shoes up the fairly direct approach far west side of Miller Saddle - it was drizzling on and off again but not bad, the snow was soft as hell in most areas even with crampons on we punched through about 4 to 6 inches or more in some areas, it was foggy, semi-white out conditions, with the wind coming and going most of the morning. We did hit some areas that (usually the open drain areas) going up the slopes that had "Blue Ice" just below the surface and all elevations below 9,600 feet got rain not snow, only the last 800 to 1,000 feet got snow on Thursday night - less than 2 inches in most spots all the way up to the summit.
We were planning on going all the way over to Folly Peak but conditions had deterioated so badly - 30 miles gusts of wind, no visibility past 100 yards at best, wet soft snow, 80+ percent humidity, etc... etc.. etc..so we bailed on that part.
If the temperatures stay the same and the clouds stay as moist as they have for the past two days your in for a long miserable hike up to the summit - if the temperature dropps by 8-10 degrees and the clouds pass and the sun comes out, it's a whole nother story. Bring crampons if you go, if the wet snow freezes, it's going to be very icy everywhere. If you go and it's still warm you will need your snow shoes for the whole trial.
We went knowing the conditions might be suspect as we wanted to test ourselves in those miserable conditions for more extreme stuff we want to do in the future. If you only go out in the nice weather you will never know how truly ugly it can get and how to handle that.
It was a long day but very enjoyable for the things we learned.
Lilbitmo
by Ellen » Thu Jan 22, 2009 2:34 pm 
Thanks so much for the excellent advice. If I do go up the tram tomorrow (Sunday), I may just head over to Round Valley and back. And, I'll bring both snowshoes and crampons.