Thought I'd give an update since I finished my trip yesterday:
conditions as of May 1 ......
1) Very first snow patches on the road show up around Elev. 4000' (this is where I chickened out and parked my Civic at a nice turnaround)
2) If you're willing to drive through some pretty OK looking snow patches with tire ruts packed in, you can get to about Elev. 4300'
3) The truly committed Jeep drivers could get to Gotchen Creek area (although I still wouldn't recommend it, tough to turn around and the road is really sloppy in the afternoon)
4) At least one snowmobiler made it to the South Climb trailhead recently! LOL
I started skinning at Gotchen Creek where it's pretty much continuous snow to the South Climb trailhead. Because it was dark and Morrison Creek sounded like it was flowing pretty good, I decided to follow the road all the way to South Climb trailhead. I was worried about falling in the creek, and there were some downed trees from the burned area sticking out of the snow here and there. Otherwise I could definitely see why heading north from Morrison Creek area would be a good idea.
It was a cooler day yesterday, and snow near the summit and Pikers Peak was kind of icy, crusty, windblown....difficult to ski! I booted down one section since I skied right into a thick cloud and couldn't see a damn thing.
But after going below the cloud, it was truly epic corn skiing for like 5000' of vert, down the south spur route, and back to the trailhead area. So good! (I was on the summit around 2:30pm for reference)