Brief report:
We climbed the right northeast (NE) couloir of North Peak. Camped close to Cascade Lake Saturday evening. We climbed unroped 'til the bergschrund. At this point we roped up, and my partner (Mark) led the pitches. We climbed the couloir on the left side. The right side had about 3" of snow on it and was not totally consolidated. Mark used 2 ice tools, and I used 2 ice tools, too. Placed a combination of rock pro (left side of couloir) at most belay spots and ice screws (and additional rock pro) for pitch protection. We used Mark's 60m rope and it worked out to 4 pitches for us. We encountered two other climbing parties; each with a party of 3. One party of 3 climbed roped up with fixed belays (like us) and the other party of 3 climbed unroped each soloing (the unroped party: each of them had 2 ice tools and did a combination of front-pointing as well as pied troisieme). We reached the notch (elev. ~ 11,960') around 1:00pm. We unroped, took crampons off and headed for the summit through the class 3 rock chute. I did a small class 4 variation by staying to climber's right, 20 feet below the summit. Reached the summit at 1:25pm. Descended part of the SE chute and cut back across to Cascade Lake to pick up our camp and hiked out to Saddlebag Lake parking area.