Alpine Scramble - Mount Howard

Road is a bit rough at the end with some pretty big rocks.  Doable in my small SUV, and probably in smaller cars if  one were REALLY careful, but I wouldn't want to try it.  We got 5000 feet gain and 12 miles round trip, which is similar to many reports on peakbagger, so the numbers on the mountaineers site aren't quite accurate.

Merrit lake trail in GREAT condition and someone working on it (the only person we saw all day).   Nason ridge trail a bit overgrown, but can be followed, and lots of blueberries to pick.   At crescent lake head up to ridge.

Heading around the lake

About to head up

We started towards the left (right past trees near end of lake), bushwacked right partly because that's where our GPX track was and ended up going back left. 

Going up to the ridge; pretty steep!

There was some boulder hoping on the way up but most of route was pretty straight forward (with some reliance on GPX track).  Route to Mastiff  and down from Mastiff was mostly a bootpath and pretty straight forward.  None of the scrambling more then ? class 2-3.

Beautiful terrain heading up after the steep part!

Howard summit!  There had been a slight chance of thunder storms, but we lucked out!

Left cars at 8:15 AM and back at trailhead at 6:30 with plenty of breaks.

Oh yeah, and there were definitely mosquitoes!!  And I put a new summit register on Mount Howard.