Forest Service road 58 was unplowed and blocked by a snow bank some distance after I-90 Exit 47 adding an extra mile or two. We started hiking at 7:20am. There had been enough new snow in the past week that it was difficult to follow the trail even with orange blazes on the trees. We lost the trail and picked it up again a few times, using compass bearings and Denny Creek as a handrail. We were on the trail at the point where the trail crosses the first bridge over Denny Creek but we were not able to find the second bridge, perhaps because we overshot it, so we crossed the creek at a shallow area. Near Keekwulee Falls the snow became deep enough that we put on snowshoes. 

There was some concern over crossing the open slopes higher up in the Denny Creek drainage. The avalanche bulletin indicated a trend of decreasing danger on account of the period of dry weather with moderate danger below 7,000 feet; however, we could see debris from recent avalanches high up on the valley walls. The avalanches may have originated from steep gullies on the rock faces. We dug a pit and confirmed the weak layers described in the avalanche bulletin. A shovel shear test produced uneven shear planes with a rough texture. A compression test produced a collapsing of one weak layer at C23 but the block did not fail and once collapsed the weak layer did not make the adjacent layers more prone to sliding. We felt that we would not be putting ourselves at undue risk by proceeding. 

As we traveled further the softer layers of snow at the surface made for tedious trail-breaking. Fortunately, we had two seemingly tireless trail-breaking machines in the form of Jay and John who did the bulk of the hard work. At a point roughly opposite the Tooth, we veered away from the trail and followed a line in the direction of the Bryant summit. We had to zig-zag to make our way up the slope and eventually we found ourselves at the flat area below the Bryant-Hemlock saddle.

On a previous climb of Bryant my party had followed a route that had taken us to the summit but that I now learned was needlessly circuitous. On that previous trip we had hiked up to the saddle and then had tediously made our way along the steep snow face just on the east side of the ridge. 

On the trip today we looked up at the moderate south face of the mountain and saw an obvious line to the summit. Lynn had climbed the peak before in summer and reported that this route was the one her party had taken. We followed the left edge of the south face and then headed to the right beneath a rock buttress to reach a final short steep step to the summit. 

There was not much room on the summit. It would have been better if we had staged people below the final step to the summit and sent three or four people up at a time and then had them come back down before sending the next group up. For the descent of the summit ridge a few people switched to crampons because there was a somewhat hard layer beneath the soft surface layer of snow. The weather on the summit ridge was cold with occasional wind gusts. 

As we were hiking out we passed a pair of skiers who were heading up the Denny Creek trail but we did not see any other parties. We were back at the cars by 4pm. A solid party and reasonably good snow conditions made for a successful winter scramble.