Alpine Scramble - Axis Peak

We did this trip on 8/6/16, doing it from the Stuart Lake side.   It looked like it would be much more difficult from the Eightmile Lake side; the other advantage to the southern route is that you have changing views of the Stuart Range during the entire route from the lake.

The straight-line distance from lake to summit is less than a mile but the elevation gain is 2500'.   The varied terrain on this slope made it more strenuous than I expeceted.  As suggested in other reports, we stayed to the right to avoid brush, but may have gone a little too far as we got into a few places where the rock scrambling was at the T4 level.  Descending from the summit we followed a route through brown sand to the col just to the west, then continued on brown sand for about 1000 vertical feet.  It is worth keeping to the sand on the descent, even though you don't want to ascend that way.  Eventually, though, you get to places where there is just a thin layer of sand hiding the rock below, where it is very easy to slip.

Rockfall is an issue in places.  We had a great group of 8 people, and I was glad to have them all on the trip, but it did make safety management more difficult and time-consuming.