Alpine Scramble - Mount Stone/South Couloir

This beautiful one day trip on 8/21/2016 of ~10 miles and ~5300' gain was much cooler than the upper 80s forecast for Saturday (8/20).  We used the Lake of the Angels route (slightly longer) instead of the Mt Stone shortcut due to the wonderful things we'd heard about this lake.   We followed an intermittent boot track close to the ridgelet crest NE of Lake of the Angels towards St Peter's Gate until turning towards scrambler's left to follow a distinct green ledge at ~5600' towards the west ridge (see here for photo of this ledge) .  Following below cliff bands, we continued west until a bit east of the west ridge crest.   A short scramble got us to the upper basin and the final scramble 'crux'.   In this photo you can see the upper basin with other parties below and to the left of the 20' scramble crux that leads towards the green patch of vegetation.  We encountered lots of other parties, and waiting a bit to avoid having others above us reduced rockfall hazard.  Total time was 9 hours with 5 hours up and 4 hours down.  Photos can be seen here.