Started hiking 6am. Arrived at base of Snake Dike at 9:30am, plenty of cairns guiding the way. Meagan lost a nalgene on the South Face 4th class ledges. One party was high up (p4), and one party was just starting. We waited about half an hour. P1 felt sketchy, placed three pieces under the roof (resulting in bad, but not horrendous, rope drag). There's probably #2/#3 cam in the roof. Jon led p2 with minimal pro. Started p3 by going up and right on the dike, clipping two bolts. This is off-route (possibly on Snake Dance, 5.9 R). Then I spotted a traverse possibility and proceeded to do roughly a 5.9 friction traverse (crux at end, 6 ft from on-route dike) with no pro. Scary! I ended the traverse about 6 ft above the last bolt on that pitch, didn't clip it. We were unsure of the route off the p6 belay, but you just go up and slightly left on the slab - looks insecure, feels pretty OK. Jon royally screwed up the rope at the p6 belay, I had to stop and knee-bar the 5.2 section, with no pro in, while he cursed and untangled. It's worth carrying some bigger cams (3, 4, maybe even 5), weight aside, definitely possibilities on p6-8 for them. Jon led p8, getting stuck at the roof since he clipped a nut into his leg loop. I had to do a number 2 at the top of p8, I'm so, so, so sorry. We finished the 5th class climbing at around 2:30 to 3pm. 3rd class slabs are fatally exposed, but we powered through them. Some snow in the saddle of the summit, easy to traverse. There were about an equal number of people and marauding squirrels on the summit. Several hikers came up the cables sans protection. A team of two just finished the RNWF route in two days, taking a shiver bivy at Big Sandy. We spent about an hour on the summit, performing typical tourist duties (food, water, Visor photos). Descent was uneventful, except for the steel cables damaging the autoblock sling webbing, a little bit of snow on subdome and a lot of goddamned hiking. Back to Upper Pines at 9:30pm.

100+ foot runouts? No problem. Tourist-filled cables on the way down, on the other hand...

The hat trick climb of Snake Dike. We hiked in at 1am, started climbing at 5, summited at 10ish, back to the car at 1:30pm. Slabs were wet this time due to run-off and hail the previous day. A guy died the previous day, hiking the cables, so they closed off the summit and we had it all for ourselves.