Alpine Scramble - Yellow Aster Butte

  Left the TH at 9:38.  Tread and foliage wet from light rain in the night.  Slick.  My previous 5 trips have always been full sun or partly sunny.  Not this year.  Thick fog with sightlines down to a 100' at times.  Spooky and disorienting.  Met backpackers coming out who had light snow during the night.  Had a food stop on rocks about 12:00.  About an hour below the hiker's summit we had light rain.  Temps cold in the damp high 40's.  About noonish the clouds started to break up a bit.  Rock at scramble section had dried so continued to the summit on my standard route (see previous report) arriving at 14:00.  Too cold a summit and too small to stay so retreated to the hiker's summit.  Clouds really breaking and now we can see the tarns to the west.  More views as we hiked out of the valley and mountains to the east and south. Met a Ptarmigan on the trail leading us from her chicks and a beautiful marmot sitting almost on the trail 20 feet away. Turned out to be an excellent trip with a compatible party of 6, 4 of which were students.