Brief report:
A mini-epic day! Climbed the right NE couloir with Alex Gorokhov. We started hiking from Saddlebag Lake at 5:05am. We reached the bottom of the snow/ice patch around 8:40am or so. This is where we geared up. Unfortunately on this Saturday there were several parties climbing the right Northeast Couloir ahead of us, so we had to wait and take our turn. We actually started climbing at 9:45am despite the ice chunks coming from the climbers above. I led all the 4 pitches as Alex had trouble with his right foot boot/crampon combination. I got hit by a softball-size ice chunk on my right rib cage that took my breath away for several seconds at the top of the 1st pitch.
After that, we still dodged several ice chunks but fortunately we didn't get hit anymore. We mostly climbed the right side of the couloir. Except for a small section on the middle of the 2nd pitch, most of the ice was brittle as a result of the previous climbing parties chopping tons of ice down the couloir. It was a bowling alley with Alex and I being the bowling pins. I finally did reach the notch at the very late hour of 3:50pm. Another 40 minutes would pass before Alex topped out. We took a half-hour break at the notch eating, drinking and putting away tools and crampons. We started climbing the class 3 rock chute to the summit at 5:05pm. I reached the summit 25 minutes later at 5:30pm. I did my usual class 4 variation just directly below the summit by climbing the class 4 20-foot section chimney there on climber's right. We got down to the notch, picked up our gear and descended the SE chute down the Conness Lake area. It was almost 8:30pm by the time we got back to the car at Saddlebag Lake: 15 and 1/2 hours roundtrip car-to-car (a long day!)
Additional info about climbing North Peak can be found here.