Unfortunately my experience has been that information from the "office staff" is too often wrong or out-dated. They tend to be overly cautious assuming the lowest common denominator of hiker, so will often say "too much snow" when there really are only a few patches. The young college interns often want to please (answer your questions) so much that they will just pass on rumors instead of verifying accuracy. So except for the very obvious, I do not find a call very useful.