Madison can be bad depending the day and the hiker. The north side was my slowest mile, took over an hour to go a half mile, and what I remember is sitting on a rock sobbing as the sun went down over Washington. When I got to Osgood tentsite I and several other hikers passed out on the tent platforms without setting up tents. I was exhausted, and I was thru-hiker fit. This was obviously not with my daypack.
Interesting to see the pictures of Lehigh Gap now, I was hiking with two other hikers and one had a dog, so we all trekked around to the bypass trail and went up together. The bypass is straight-up switchbacks, but no scrambling. It was really hot, and it poured later that afternoon.