Fantastic weather! T-shirt and shorts the whole way; brought a windbreaker and gloves but never used them.
Such a beautiful route! Having attempted this once before, I had ideas for the line I wanted to take, and it worked out.
I tried a VK-level effort up Dana, but my legs locked up a bit and I barely took a few minutes off of my previous time. It was enough to keep me in the game, and I launched out towards Gibbs. The normal route goes directly up to the ridge, and then follows that to the summit. But as you can see in the pictures (on Strava), there is a small rise and then a saddle just before the peak proper, so I contoured up the ridge in a beeline for the saddle, taking off a small amount of distance and some precious minutes. There were a few wisps of snow, but nothing much left from the previous storm.
Following the ridge down from Gibbs is straightforward, and once you hit the treeline I highly recommend staying on the crest of the ridge; the forest is open, soft and runnable (a joy after the funky shale talus you just covered!), and taking it down in it's entirety puts you directly onto the Mono Pass trail, also taking off a wee bit of distance, versus if you cut off the ridge at any point.
I was pretty fried by the time I hit the trailhead, but so psyched to be able to take almost 20 minutes off of the previous FKT, and to pr by almost half an hour!