Brief report:
After meeting with Alex Gorokhov at 7:00am at the bottom of the ski lifts, I left my car there at the parking lot and Alex gave me a ride to the Baldy village church (the start of the Bear Canyon trail). Alex then went on to Icehouse Canyon as his agenda was to climb Cucamonga Peak. I started hiking at 7:30am. By 10:20am, I was taking my lunch break at 9080 feet. At about 9400 feet, the puffy clouds blowing from the northeast created a white-out. This is my 1st white-out on Baldy. It got cold quick and very windy (approx 40mph with gusts up to 50mph). The white-out was very persistant all the way to the summit and beyond. I had to slow down to hike through the white-out....and then, as soon as I gained the upper ridge at about 9800 feet, the snow was very very hard. In fact, there were patches of ice sheets. I had to take my crampons out and put them on with ice axe on hand. It took me like 1 1/2 hours to go from 9080' to the summit (10,064') because of the white-out conditions. I only stayed 15 minutes on the summit (sheltered against the ground) hoping it would clear, but it didn't. I decided to bag Mt. Harwood (9552') on the way down. I kept my ice axe out and crampons on all the way down the Devil's Backbone. I arrived at Baldy Notch (7800') by 3:00pm. Then, I took the ski lift down to save my knees, and at 3:30pm (8 hrs later after I started in the morning) I was sitting on my car warming up.
Additional info about climbing Mt. Baldy can be found here.