There is no water from Pyramid lake to camp so plan accordingly. Route finding became a real challenge between about 4500ft and 5500ft. Boot paths lead in many directions. Orange markers exist in few spots which we found helpful. The return the route is much easier to follow and you quickly learn where you went wrong.

We camped at the terminus of the Colonial Glacier where we found a moraine lake and nice sandy benched for camp.  On summit day, we left camp at 4:30am. From the moraine lake, we accessed the Colonial Glacier along the north side of the lake by crossing over a solid snowbridge. The glacier route is straightforward and enjoyable.

To achieve the summit block, access the scramble route via the West ridge. A rough boot path ascends easily up the ridge. At 8,200' traverse left toward an obvious NW facing gully. Enter the gully and scramble roughly 75' (easy 3rd class). Exit the gully by traversing left (a notch is marked with a cairn / 4th class move) over an arête and drop down about 10'. (This is somewhat exposed.) Proceed directly upward on flat ramps (these are not immediately obvious until you are on them) that run along the arête for about 20'. Traverse right along a sandy boot path (the exposure lessens) and look for an easy gully (3rd class) that runs about 150' to the summit.  We summitted at 9:00am.

Note: There are cairns everywhere on the north face. Don't get fooled by them and venture out onto the exposed loose terrain. Much of the scramble hugs the arête which make up the left portion of the NW gully.

On the return the way back from 5500ft - 4500 ft went a little easier with tracks to follow but the trail disappears and reappears frequently. Between 4500ft and 2600ft there were some surprising alternate trails down that we had not noticed which are easy to end up on. I think we all came down a different trail at times from the one before. Keep the group together." In our case, we ended up on a trail that took us to the other side of Pyramid Lake.