Alpine Scramble - Hawkins Mountain

Wow - what a great trip!  The weather was perfect: sunny all day, cool in the morning and warm in the afternoon.  Starting from the DeRoux TH we had a nice slow rising warm up to just before Gallagher Head Lake,  which we bypassed via the cutoff trail to avoid the Jeeps and campers.  

We walked the Jeep roads until around 5900' where we swung off the road and made our way north and west to the south rib, which we took to the summit.  On the way to the rib we came across an old miner's probe into the rock - a cave that was about 20' long and maybe 4' high.  It was pretty cool and thankfully there were no bears or cougars inside.  In fact there was not even any animal scat inside, which was surprising.

Once on the rib the route is pretty straightforward - just follow it up to the false summit then hang a left to the obvious summit about 1/4 mile on a slight left bend.  We did see a large mountain goat on the way up and later saw him on the summit of Gallagher Head.

We exited via the saddle then stay left under Gallagher Head to get back to the Jeep road much closer to the lake.  We stopped at the lake for a quick cool down on the way back but didn't stay long as it was busy as usual on a warm summer Saturday.